Fate Annihilation
by metallover
Summary: Eight years after the Fifth Holy Grail War mana starts pooling again in Fuyuki City, and magi from all over the world receive Command Seals denoting them as masters for the looming Sixth Holy Grail War. Caught in the middle of a war he wants no part of is a reluctant soldier; Ado. Along with the survivors of the last war, Ado and his new comrades set out to end the cycle for good.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note**

**(DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the characters, places or anything else (even the OCs; I shall offer them up as sacrificial lambs if necessary!); they remain property of Type-Moon and Kadokawa Shoten. This is a work of fanfiction and love: please don't sue me.)**

**Immanent foul language and violence warning: This story is rated 'M' (it's based on an adult Visual Novel anyway) for gratuitous swearing, violence and perhaps sexual situations later on down the line. Ya'll have been warned. **

**Welcome, one and all, to my attempt at a multi-chapter story based after the Heaven's Feel route of **_**Fate/Stay Night**_**! I loved the VN, and I especially loved the ending for Heaven's Feel, and like any good fan-fiction-writing-fan, I thought I'd take a crack at something! **

**So in short this story is post-Heaven's Feel True Ending of the VN (NOT the anime), and is the telling of the Sixth Holy Grail War six years after the fifth.**

**This story is choc-full of OCs, including our reluctant protagonists, brothers Ado and Leo. That's just the way I'm writing it. But fear not! All the surviving members of the cast from Heaven's Feel will feature heavily in this story (eventually; I have to set the scene first). **

**Now for the awkward part: I am ashamed to admit that my Japanese reading skills are pathetic, so I was unable to complete **_**Fate/Hollow Ataraxia**_**, so consider this an alternate-universe work where **_**Ataraxia**_** never happened. Could I google it? Sure, but it's not the same, and I don't want to sully what was something so special for me in **_**Stay Night**_**.**

**Any questions, comments or concerns, leave a review or PM me; I don't plan to work exceedingly hard on this story in the near future (this will be story number three I'm keeping on active rotation, so it's got mental competition in my head), but I **_**may**_** be motivated to give it extra attention if I get some good feedback.**

**And now, as I say before every chapter I write: Read, review and enjoy!**

* * *

**Chapter 1**

_Cairns, Australia – 6 Years Ago_

Ado let out a contented sigh as he put his booted feet up on the coffee table, beer in hand.

Normally, his mother would be chasing him around the house, demanding that he remove his boots and 'get them the hell off her table', but she was out having coffee or whatever it was middle-aged housewives did in their ample free time. His younger brother was upstairs, holed up in his room that the family affectionately dubbed 'the cave'; his older brother was off at 'class', which was of course code for 'I'm going to ditch classes and go get high with my friends', and his father was at work.

Ado had finished his work with the army reserve for the day and had total run of the big, two-and-a-half story house (the bottom floor was a quasi-basement; the house was on a hill, so it was two stories from the front and three from the back). So of course he chose to do the one thing he'd usually get his ass kicked for and put his booted feet up on his mother's pristine coffee table in the living room. The TV was on, playing the local satellite station's metal radio channel, but Ado wasn't really listening; he just sat, sipping his beer and absently twitched his foot to the beat of whatever song was playing; something by 'Coheed and Cambria' according to the TV.

It was comforting to know that in the month he'd been in New Guainía 'defending the peace' that nothing had changed.

Well, the only thing that was different was him.

His fatigues were sweaty from the humid tropical Cairns heat; his mom would bitch about him making the couch stink, but he was too lazy to change; nothing new there. The real change in him was the muscles on his arms and legs, and the new girth in his shoulders. He'd taken training seriously in the last few years, and it showed. A lot of guys in the reserve went soft almost as soon as they were given their posting; Ado had sworn he'd keep fit.

With another contented sigh he let himself sink deeper into the couch and took the first sip from his beer.

It was nice when change was subtle and things went smoothly.

* * *

That night at dinner Ado's mother was shooting him a dirty look across the table; she'd seen the black marks from his boots before he could clean them. Completely eclipsing the fact that his brother had come home so obviously high it was almost comical. But that was his family; Leo got away with bloody murder because he was the oldest, and David, the youngest, was only seen at meals anyway, leaving Ado as the easiest target for his parents' ire.

He over-exaggerated, of course; the last thing he needed was to give himself a middle-child complex. Or, more precisely, to bring it back after so many years overcoming it.

"How was work today?" His father asked as a matter of course, breaking the silence.

This was how dinner went; it started normal, basic every-day questions and answers before things got… weird.

Their father was the tallest in the family, with thick arms and broad shoulders from a lifetime of carpentry. His neat, trim hair and beard were at odds with Leo's constant messy appearance, the oldest son being shorter than Ado but just as broad as their father, with a mop of hair hanging past his shoulders and a scraggly, unkempt beard.

"Same shit," Ado said, helping himself to a spoonful of potatoes. "Got yelled at by the Sergeant, ran around like a dumbass all day, came home and had a beer."

"I learned about Russian existentialist authors like-" Leo began, before David groaned.

"Please," the youngest moaned. "No uni talk at the table. I have enough trouble with high-school. You just confuse me more."

Leo chuckled.

"You just wait until they get to trying to teach you about discourses," the oldest son chuckled darkly from next to Ado.

David groaned, his head thumping loudly onto the table next to his plate.

"Mom, my brothers are being mean to me," he groaned.

"But I didn't even say anything yet!" Ado said defensively.

"You were thinking it," David muttered.

"Enough," their father said.

The three boys instantly clammed up. Apparently enough time had yet to pass before they could start relaxing like normal. Leo yawned and stretched his arms above his head. He worked out and it showed, but he was nowhere near as fit as Ado was, a source of pride for the younger sibling.

"Nice ink," Ado said, pointing with the back of his fork to the new tattoo on Leo's bicep that had been covered by his shirt until he'd stretched.

It was so fresh it still had the plastic-wrap on it.

"Oh, right," Leo said absently, picking at the clear plastic taped to his arm. "I _did_ get that done. I can't believe I forgot."

His brother lifted his sleeve, displaying for the family…

"A pentagram?" their mother asked incredulously. "Really? A _pentagram_!? Are you trying to give your grandmother another heart-attack? What will she say when she sees you again!?"

"'Wow, it's nice to see you again, Leo; look how big you've gotten.' Besides, it's not satanic," Leo said defensively, peeling the plastic away. "Look; no Latin. All the writing is in Nordic runes. It's a magic circle, not a satanic one."

Ado scoffed. His brother liked three things above all else; tattoos, metal music and Vikings. So of course he was covered in Nordic runes and scenes from the Edda. His right arm was a complete sleeve, but funnily enough he still hadn't gotten a single tattoo from halfway down his left bicep, leaving his left arm completely bare except for this new circle just below his shoulder and a 'magical' rune on each knuckle that Ado was pretty sure was meant to spell 'fuck' while being partly inconspicuous.

"I think it looks cool," David said, leaning across the table to get a better look.

Ado discretely stole a glance at his father's reaction; the man was staring impassively at his eldest son flexing his arm for his brother and mother making his new tattoo 'dance'. Leo was the self-proclaimed 'family screw-up'. He was failing at University, a real feat considering how intelligent he was and the amount of study he'd done abroad in places like Ottawa and London, and spent most of his time either lounging around his parents' house or out with his friends causing trouble. At least Ado was looking for an apartment in the city where he wouldn't be a burden on his parents any more. Leo revelled in the fact he'd apparently broken his father's will to be rid of him.

But for all that, Ado and his older brother got along great.

"Yeah, it looks pretty cool," he admitted, not meeting his mother's vicious glare.

"So come with me next time!" Leo persisted. "We'll get your unit insignia tattooed on your arm or something! Show a little pride!"

Ado rolled his eyes. "I'm not getting a tattoo. Not from your guy, anyway."

"What's wrong with Mick?"

"Besides his filthy studio and penchant for smoking while he works?"

Ado had gone with his brother once and decided he would not be getting tattooed by the same man under any circumstances. At all. Ever.

"He does good work," Leo insisted half-heartedly, twisting his left arm around to look at the image of a hammer-wielding Thor duelling with the Serpent on the back of his forearm surrounded by knot patterns and runes.

"Why Vikings?" their mother asked exasperatedly.

Leo grinned. "Have you never looked at our family genealogy?"

"We're German," their mother insisted. "Your last name is Sigmund."

"Which is descended from a Nordic first-name," Leo argued.

This was a common argument at the dinner table. After all, their family was about as muddled as it was possible to get; Leo identified as a Viking, David and Ado didn't think any further back than being Australian and their mother was French by birth. The only person who never weighed in on the conversation was their father, who Ado assumed just didn't care one way or the other. Ado was in the Australian army, living in Australia, and he desperately wanted a normal Australian girlfriend; that's all that really mattered.

Leo let out an almighty belch, signalling the descent into the stupidity that their usual dinner conversations eventually became. With a sigh, Ado rose to the bait.

"Jeez, your growling gets better every time," he said with a malicious grin at his brother. "When were you going to start recording again?"

"About the same time you stop being a pussy and start getting needles without someone there to hold your hand," Leo countered with a savage grin, flipping Ado off.

Their mother sighed; it was obvious where this was heading. So began the animated dinner conversations their family were infamous for.

"Just… don't throw any food around this time," their mother pleaded weakly as anarchy descended.

* * *

Ado stepped out of the shower and took a moment to admire his reflection in the mirror as he wrapped a towel around his waist. He'd been doughy as a child and teen, so it was a source of great pride and success that he was so fit now. He flexed his arms a few times, grinning at the stupid vanity he was displaying. But he had worked hard to get to where he was, he reasoned as he lifted his arms above his head, flexing his triceps; what was wrong with a little pride? He dropped his arms and ran a hand across his defined chest, fingers lingering on the pink welt that marked his first scar as a soldier; a training accident, but it was still a wound. An accident while assembling their rifles with live ammo for the first time; a freak accident with a one-in-a-million odds chance of happening, earning him his barracks nickname 'Lucky-Ado'. There was no way anyone in his family was finding out about that particular nickname.

His thoughts were disturbed by an angry shout from outside the bathroom.

"Ado, hurry the fuck up or I swear to Christ they will never find your body!"

The young soldier came crashing back to the reality of sharing a single bathroom between two full-grown men as he opened the door to glare at Leo.

His older brother was hunched over, hands between his thighs.

"Get. Out. Of the way. Or I'm pissing on your bed."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Ado said with a smirk as he leaned against the door frame, holding the door closed with his foot. "Did you need to use the bathroom?"

Leo shouted and barrelled past his brother, shoving him bodily before making for the toilet at the opposite end of the bathroom; an afterthought on the quasi-basement that was built into the foundations of the house, the third floor had two bedrooms and a bathroom at the base of the stairs, but an afterthought bathroom with the shower, sink and toilet all occupying one big square tiled space.

"You could at least close the door!" Ado laughed as he tightened his towel, turning and beginning to walk back to his room.

"Hold on a sec!" Leo called.

Ado hesitated, not turning back around until he heard a flush.

"I got a bunch of new 'games'," Leo said, emphasizing the last word. "You know… _games_."

Ado tried to show none of his excitement, also valiantly trying not to become embarrassed by what he was about to ask.

"Can I have them?" he mumbled, ears turning red and an awkward grin breaking out on his face despite his best efforts.

Leo patted his brother on the shoulder.

"They're already on your hard-drive."

Ado nodded his thanks and hurried back to his room, locking the door behind him and sitting down quickly at his computer, already booted up and showing the desktop as he plugged in his hard-drive. He opened up the 'new folder' sitting smack-bang in the middle of all his old files, resisting the urge to shout for joy when the list of new eroge, erotic Japanese games that was the shared 'not-so-secret secret shame' of the two brothers, greeted him. A month in the field without any pornography had been torture; that was all about to end.

"Leo, you glorious bastard," Ado muttered, beginning to install the first game. "I knew there was a reason I kept coming back here."

* * *

Ado yawned and stretched before rubbing the back of his left hand that was beginning to cramp from continuous clicking, looking over at the digital alarm clock on the bedside table. The readout said it was past one in the morning; he'd started playing a little after ten. And he still wasn't wearing pants. He stood and stretched, his back giving a loud crack as the towel fell to the floor.

Even though it was past midnight there was still movement around the house. Leo would be going to sleep soon; he usually spent half the night locked in the garage rebuilding whatever engine their father had gotten his hands on, and David was a notorious night-owl that the family only really saw at dinner anyway.

Ado flicked his hand a little and flexed his fingers as he pulled on some pyjama pants one-handed, trying to get the cramp to go away. He collapsed on the bed, not even bothering to crawl under the sheets. It was past midnight and still about twenty-six degrees out.

"Why is it so freaking hot in this country!?" he groaned, rolling onto his side and wishing for the umpteenth time he'd claimed the room with working air-conditioning.

The room was bare by normal standards, but Ado barely spent any time there anyway. The only thing that marked it as his space was a big frame on one wall full of limited edition comics that he'd won as part of a raffle at a local comic book store. All the other walls were bare, the only furniture being his bed, bedside table and desk and chair. The closet only held a few articles of clothing; most of his stuff was still packed up in boxes up-stairs in his old room. He'd packed up, ready to tell his parents the address of the place to ship his boxes to until he'd been posted back in Cairns. Now the only luxury he allowed himself in the interim period while he was house-hunting were his framed comics.

The room was a stark contrast to his brother's room, full of junk. Ado's current room was smaller, as the bathroom cut a fair chunk of space out of it, but Leo's room was the exact size of the living-room above it. Bookshelves lined one wall, while half of the space had been turned into a home cinema with a gigantic TV and all the latest game consoles, surround sound, all the crap that confused the hell out of Ado. The shelves were adorned with DVDs, games, books, toys, all the kind of nerdy junk that Ado loved just as much, but had limited himself in buying. Leo often referred to himself as 'geek' or 'otaku' (which apparently meant the same thing in Japanese). Ado shared the sentiment, and anyone walking into the room would as well, except for two things.

One was the Jackson guitar proudly displayed on a stand in the corner next to a 'full Marshall stack' as Leo called it, the instrument and speakers being the bane of many of Ado's early mornings. The other was the bookshelf set away from the others, full of old leather-bound volumes and hand-written journals. Ado honestly didn't care what was in them, but they gave off a kind of creepy vibe that gave him chills if he got too close to it. Plus it didn't help that the top two shelves were full of jars full of creepy looking crap that Ado assumed was leftovers from his 'black-metal' phase. Ado chuckled as he recalled his brother, on stage in black leather festooned with spikes, his hair dyed black and his face painted white, screaming about Satan at the top of his lungs at one of the shows he'd dragged his little brother to. Ado had been the only one there without face-paint on, and he'd thought that the whole scene was hilarious.

He winced again and rolled onto his back as sudden pain shot through his hand, gripping his wrist with his other hand in the darkness.

"What the hell…" he muttered through clenched teeth.

Maybe he'd dropped something on it at some point, or he was just getting carpel-tunnel syndrome from excessive gaming.

The pain died down and Ado relaxed. Already half asleep, he decided that the mysterious pain could wait until morning. Ado nodded off, wondering if he'd still be able to hold his rifle again on Monday.

* * *

Ado grumbled, slapping at his alarm-clock as it blared a cacophony fit to wake the dead.

Why he was forcing himself to get up so early on a Saturday he wasn't sure, but the soldier in him screamed 'time to go running', so without so much as a focused glance at his reflection he pulled on a pair of shorts and his runners, grabbed the twenty-kilo weighted backpack he kept near his door and went out the back, sneaking past a loudly snoring Leo to get to the back door in his room. That was the flaw of the bottom-floor; the only exit to the outside or the bathroom was through Leo's room. Fortunately Ado's brother was a sound sleeper, and after discretely closing the door behind him and vaulting the low fence in a single bound, Ado was off, not even bothering to stretch and ignoring the added weight on his back. He usually ran drills with a full forty-kilo kit anyway; twenty was like a holiday for him.

His tired mind wouldn't wake up properly for another half-hour yet anyway; easily enough time for him to do a little jog before breakfast. He'd work out properly later in the afternoon.

Ado stumbled, his tired mind completely forgetting about the uneven sections of sidewalk that the local council was too lazy or cheap to fix. He managed to catch himself, but at a fatal loss of momentum. That was his weakness in all things; if he stopped once he started, he was done one way or another, weather his task was complete or not. It had made basic… interesting, to say the least.

Ado wiped at his forehead with the back of his hand, checking his watch and wondering when exactly he had put it on. He'd been running for about ten minutes. If he turned and ran back, it'd be about twenty minutes of running, which was good enough for a weekend. Besides, he hadn't eaten, and…

Ado came to an abrupt halt as he turned, a large black dog sitting completely still in his path watching him intently.

"Er… nice doggy?" he said hesitantly.

He wasn't afraid of dogs, per say; he was definitely a cat person, though. The dog cocked its head at him, watching silently. Figuring he could outrun it if the animal became violent, or at least climb a tree or something, Ado began inching around the dog.

The animal barely moved, just turning to watch as Ado circled it. Once he was safely around it he started off at the same pace he had been going before he'd almost tripped, glancing over his shoulder once he had gone about ten meters.

The dog had vanished.

"Creepy-ass dog," Ado muttered, shaking his head and getting back into the rhythm of his running.

* * *

Ado reclined against the back of his chair at the table, one arm hanging over the back of it as he sat diagonally, picking at his pancakes. Something about that dog had creeped him out, but of course he'd been half-asleep at the time so he'd just written it off.

Strange things were happening in the Sigmund household that morning, too, though.

Namely, Leo was awake before noon on a Saturday.

Ado's older brother looked… strained as he picked at his own food, constantly sneaking glances around the room like he was itching from withdrawal. Again. So no big surprise there. Their father was silent as he ate, nothing new there either, but there was a tension in his posture that Ado had only seen once when he'd found Leo's weed stash. That had been a good day for Ado; he hadn't laughed so hard in a long time. He was smiling just thinking about it. Their family had a… weird way of dealing with stressful situations. If they weren't yelling, they were laughing their arses off.

Then something Ado had never thought to see in his lifetime happened.

David came walking down the stairs. In the daylight. _On a weekend._

"Well, now I've seen everything," Ado said, moving to sit in his seat properly and laying both hands on the table.

"What?" he added, glancing at his brother and trying to ignore the unexplained tense atmosphere in the room. "Hell finally freeze over? Or did you overclock your graphics card again and melt part of the carpet? Again?"

David grumbled something obscene and incoherent, flipping the bird in Ado's general direction as he shuffled to the kitchen. Ado looked back to the table and froze, looking into the shocked face of his father on one side and the horrified expression of his brother on the other.

"What the fuck is on your hand?" Leo asked, his voice barely more than a whisper.

Ado glanced down and did a double-take. On the back of his left hand was a red tattoo, resembling one of the knots adorning Leo's right arm.

"Did you give me a fucking tattoo in my sleep!?" Ado shouted, trying to wipe the symbol away. "I can't have any tattoos on exposed flesh in the army, you idiot, why the hell would you-"

"You would have noticed my tattooing your hand, dipshit," Leo said venomously, grabbing Ado's hand and inspecting the red mark. "Do you have any idea how much getting a tat on your hand hurts!?"

"Then what the fuck is-"

"Enough," their father grunted, stalling any further argument as he stood.

"Leo. Garage, now. Ado, go to your room. For your own safety you are not to leave the house until I say it's safe. Am I clear?"

Ado nodded wordlessly. His father very rarely used that tone of voice, so he knew that shit was hitting the fan in a big way.

Leo gave him a clap on the shoulder and a sympathetic look as he rose and exited the dining room, their father following silently as the two headed for the garage.

"This is way too soon," Ado heard Leo saying as the door closed. "The last one was only two…"

David wandered into the dining room just as the door to the garage closed, cutting off Leo's curious sentence, plopping himself down in his usual spot with a plateful of pancakes and reaching for the syrup.

"What'd I miss?" he asked sleepily, emptying the bottle onto his plate.

* * *

For three hours now Ado had been sitting silently in his room, trawling the internet in an attempt to dismiss the unease he currently felt and reading whatever nonsense he could find. All he could say was that the waiting was torture. He'd tried watching funny YouTube videos to no avail; he'd tried reviving some of his MMO accounts and just couldn't focus; hell, even porn left him disinterested and distracted. So now he was just trawling news sites, wondering what the hell was going on and becoming more and more agitated.

He looked up from his computer when he heard the door open, and his jaw dropped for the third time that morning.

In the doorway stood Leo, clean-shaven, and with his long hair tied back. The only reason Ado could tell it was his brother was because of the tattoos.

"Come with me," he said before disappearing again.

"What in the hell is going on today?" Ado asked, obediently following his brother out of the room and up the stairs.

On the open-plan first floor David was absent, but their mother sat in the living room watching whatever 'Real Housewives' show was on. Leo wordlessly led Ado the opposite direction through the kitchen and into the garage.

A thick smell of oil and lubricants met Ado's nose, machine parts spread about all over the place. The family didn't actually use the garage for storing their multitude of cars; rather it was their father and Leo's playground. Disassembled motorbikes lined one wall, with the three pristine racers sitting in the middle of the space, a clean area around them.

"Why are we in the garage?" Ado asked curiously as Leo locked the door behind them. "And where's your beard? You wanna explain to me what's going on?"

"Not really," Leo said with a shrug. "You inadvertently cost me my beard, so I'm pissed. Dad's going to talk you through it."

Leo walked over to an empty corner, stopping and looking down at the floor. The shorter man said something in a language Ado didn't recognize, and much to his astonishment the floor in the corner moved. It didn't move so much as melt; solid concrete dripping away to reveal a spiral staircase leading downwards into a space Ado was sure didn't exist in the main house plans.

"Ladies first," Leo said, motioning for Ado to lead.

Ado didn't even possess the mental faculties at that point to flip his brother off, so he simply began to descend the spiral staircase. It didn't go far, and soon Ado was standing in a stone-walled room full of…

"What in the name of holy hell…?"

It was like Leo's weird bookshelf had taken over this secret space in the house; shelves of old tomes and jars of seemingly random things lined one wall; along the far wall and the one opposite the shelf-wall was a bench stretching the length of both walls, piled high with papers and crap that Ado couldn't even begin to make sense of. In the middle of the bare stone floor was a circle in what Ado hoped was red paint, oddly reminiscent of the pentagram on Leo's arm.

"Welcome to the rabbit-hole, Alice," Leo said, giving him a light shove into the room.

"Boy are you in for a treat today. We were never going to tell you about this, so feel special."

"We?" Ado asked, confusedly looking around.

There, in the corner, leaned over what looked like a pen attached to a small metal arm and writing on its own, was their father, showing no inclination of looking up at their entry.

"Someone please explain what's going on right now?" Ado begged, feeling overwhelmed.

Leo glanced up from a glass orb he was playing with on the counter.

"Huh? Oh, sorry. This is all pretty normal for me. You must be feeling kinda out of it, right?"

"That's putting it mildly."

"Well… I don't really know where to start. You see… er…" Leo muttered, scratching his head and looking for the best way to explain things.

"We're a family of Magi," their father said from the corner without looking up. "Start from there."

Ado burst out laughing; he couldn't help it. All this for a practical joke? A little excessive, but they'd had him going for a minute there…

"Don't laugh," Leo said dead seriously, holding out his left arm. "This is serious shit."

As Ado watched dumbstruck, blue-white symbols appeared beneath the hair on Leo's left arm exactly between the knuckle-tattoos and the new pentagram on his bicep, slowly rotating as if with a mind of their own. Lines merged and connected, and Ado definitely picked out a few of the runes that Leo was so obsessed with.

"This is my magic crest," Leo said proudly. "It was dad's before he passed it to me; it was Grandpa's before that, all the way back to the Middle Ages."

Ado's brother let the arm drop, the symbols fading back to nothing.

"But a Magus family is only supposed to have one scion," Leo continued. "One crest, one scion; all first-born son crap. That's why you and David don't know anything about this; you have the potential, sure; but we lack the resources to give you a crest."

He pointed to the symbol on the back of Ado's left hand.

"In short, if that should be on anyone's hand it should be my hand, not yours."

"That's not for you to say, Leo," their father interjected, finally looking up. "The Grail ultimately chooses its own participants, not us."

"Yeah, yeah," Leo muttered, falling back into a chair next to one of the benches. "I'm actually kinda relieved it's not me, to be honest. Fuck all that Grail-War shit. The further away from that I am the better."

"Well, that's too bad," their father said, standing and tearing the paper the self-writing pen had been scribbling on away from the roll. "Because as the scion of the Sigmund family, it's your job to see this through. An untrained Magus cannot possibly be expected to do this alone, and I already gave you the majority of the family crest."

"So this is my problem weather I like it or not," Leo groaned, letting his head fall backwards. "Great. Just great."

Ado cleared his throat. "Um, I have a question. Can someone please explain to me what the hell is going on?"

"And they gave him a gun?" Leo said to their father with a smirk.

"Son, I'd love to explain this all to you, but I have to make preparations," their father said, coming up to Ado and resting his hands on his shoulders. "Leo will do his best, and once he's done, I'll answer any questions you might have."

"I'll leave the rest to you, just like we discussed," their father said, turning to Leo before striding up the stairs, leaving the two brothers sitting and standing in an awkward atmosphere.

"I have one question before we start," Leo said, looking off into the distance and taking an even tone; the kind of tone Ado knew from experience often meant ensuing violence.

"You have absolutely no idea how that mark got on your hand?"

"None at all," Ado insisted.

"And you had no idea we were… different?"

"Well I always knew we were weird…" Ado said, trying to diffuse his brother's tension with humour.

"I'm serious Ado," Leo warned, finally looking over to his brother.

The firm set to his features was a new look for Leo, and the malice in his eyes had never been directed at Ado's person before. He'd seen that look multiple times before he'd been forced to drag his brother off of some stupid bastard dumb enough to start a fight out in the bars in Cairns, right before they had to run for their lives from the cops.

"Leo, I swear on Mom's life that I have no idea what the fuck is going on."

"Good," Leo sighed, tension leaving his frame as his fists unclenched. "I trust you, Ado. But if I find out you're lying, I'll do the proper Magus thing; the thing any other family in this situation would have done."

"I'll kill you," Leo said honestly, looking away again.

Ado resisted the urge to reply with his usual snarky attitude towards his brother's threats; something about Leo's attitude screamed of seriousness, something that he wasn't used to seeing in the shorter man.

"Well," Leo said, standing, clapping his hands and disrupting the awkward atmosphere in the room, pulling a chair to the middle of the circle on the floor. "Sit."

"Not until I get some answers of my own," Ado protested, crossing his arms.

"I'll talk while I work," Leo said more like his usual self, pointing to the chair. "We haven't got a whole lot of time to get a lot of stuff done in, so sit your ass down and let's get started. Trust me. It doesn't hurt that badly."

"Last time you said trust me I wound up with an eye-full of mustard," Ado grumbled, shuffling over to the chair and carefully perching on it.

"Will you let that go already?" Leo said from behind him. "We were kids. It was funny. Move on."

"The smell still makes my eyes water…" Ado grumbled as Leo's presence faded.

Sounds of rummaging through boxes ensued, but before Ado could turn and see what Leo was doing the older Sigmund was back at his side, a small rock in his hand.

"This is a rune of power," Leo explained, holding the smooth black rock up.

Inscribed on it was a small symbol Ado didn't recognize, and he was pretty sure Leo had the entire Nordic alphabet on his right arm and shoulder.

"Say 'ah'!" Leo said suddenly, forcing the rock into Ado's mouth and clamping a hand over it, rubbing his throat with his free hand.

Ado gagged once, feeling the strangely warm stone work its way down his dry throat. Shoving his brother back bodily Ado rose to his feet and gagged, but he could feel the hot stone working its way to his stomach undaunted by his body's attempts at expelling it.

"Will you relax?" Leo laughed.

"What… what did you…?" Ado asked weakly, falling back into the chair, suddenly beset by weakness.

"What we're about to do took me five years to accomplish on my own when I was a kid," Leo said, becoming serious again. "And that's a fucking miracle in itself. We're jump-starting your magic circuits. I'm not going to lie, baby bro. This is going to hurt like a mother-fucker. Bear with it."

Ado couldn't respond; the stone had reached his stomach now, and the heat was intensifying, spreading to his other limbs. His whole body felt like it was on fire. What the hell had Leo done to him? Had he been drugged, or…

Leo placed his hands on Ado's shoulders from behind.

"Relax," Leo said in a strangely soothing tone. "Your circuits have always been there; they just have to wake up now. It's painful, and it'll be uncomfortable for the rest of your life, but believe me when I say that the trade-off is worth it."

Ado was barely listening; he felt his consciousness, no, his mind and his very self, ebbing and flowing as the heat pulsated from within his stomach, spreading throughout his body. He clamped down hard on his identity, using the mental fortitude he'd developed in basic to stubbornly hold his mind together.

"Huh," Leo said curiously after a few moments. "You're doing pretty well on your own, actually. Let's see how far you get without my help."

Invisible fire danced beneath Ado's skin; his nerves screamed in agony, but his jaw hung slack and useless. No, that wasn't right; his jaw was clenched so tight he could feel his teeth cracking. The only place that didn't hurt was where Leo's hands rested on his shoulders. An aura of cool air exuded from Leo, almost like the man was a walking air-conditioner; his presence behind Ado had a cooling effect almost like a block of ice.

"Now remember this pain," Leo said sympathetically. "Because that's what your life is about to become. You think this hurts? All I'm doing is jump-starting something that was already there. You wait until I put part of my Crest into you."

"No…" Ado groaned, feeling the heat dissipate and the threat to his mind recede.

"Huh?" Leo asked, leaning closer.

"No… homo… right?"

Leo threw his head back, bursting into hysterics.

"See?" Leo said, clapping Ado on the shoulder and removing his hands. "I knew you had it in you. Step one, complete."

Ado gasped, the heat starting to dissipate further. He still felt warm though, like he had a fever.

"So tell me again… what you just made me eat."

"A runestone," Leo said, retrieving a small black pouch from the counter behind him.

"That's kinda my thing. I use runes to focus and execute magic without burning up my circuits. Dad uses words of power, but they just don't seem to work for me like runestones do. That being said, some Magus' use gems, some use mercury, some even use blood or…"

Leo made an exaggerated retching sound.

"Grubs and insects. But runes seem to resonate best with me, so you go with what you know. I made you swallow a rune of power to flip the switch inside you and activate the circuits. One of my good runes, too, you bastard. It'll take me a week to replace it."

"Well excuse me," Ado grumbled, rubbing his arms and feeling… strange was the only word he could use for it.

"It's not like I just ate a rock that made me feel like I jumped into a pool of acid or anything."

"Butch up," Leo said, pulling a chair across the floor and sitting face to face with Ado.

"Now close your eyes and try to let your mind empty. I'm going to test your magical affinity."

"Test my what? You're going to slap me in the face, aren't you?"

"This is no time for the stupid kids games we usually play," Leo said empathetically. "Now close your eyes."

Ado did as he was instructed, closing his eyes and trying to let his mind-

***THWACK!***

"You sonnuvabitch!" Ado shouted, reaching forward to grab at his hysterical brother's neck.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Leo laughed, trying to regain his composure and fend his irate younger sibling off at the same time. "I couldn't help myself!"

Ado fell back into the chair, still feeling a little weak from the runestone's effects.

"Empty your mind," Leo snickered. "But keep your eyes open. Or I'll probably slap you again."

Ado emptied his head, much easier now that he could concentrate on his irritation and glaring at his older brother.

"Uruz," Leo intoned, holding the black velvet bag up to his brother's face.

"No? Huh. Kenaz! Nope… Let's try… Isa! Phew. I was hoping I wouldn't have to share that one."

"What?" Ado asked.

"Isa," Leo explained offhandedly, clearly thinking about something else. "Means 'ice'. It's my elemental focus. Let's continue…"

"Algiz!" Leo said, and the bag shivered.

"There we go…" Leo muttered, reaching into the bag and drawing one stone out.

"Algiz!" Leo repeated, and the rune carved into the smooth black surface of the stone lit up, a three-pronged 'Y' shape in gold light.

"Well, that was easy. Let's put that one aside and see if any others react, shall we?"

For an hour they sat there, Leo spouting off the names of runes seemingly at random, then going back and repeating them all again. No others reacted the way that 'algiz' had.

"What does it mean?" Ado asked, holding the smooth black rock up to the light.

"Protection," Leo explained, putting his runes back into their pouch. "The one I used to open your magic circuits was 'ingwaz', which means 'new life' and 'internal growth', by the way. It's usually used to bless pregnant women or in healing magic, but I thought it might get the best results in 'growing' your magic circuits without tearing up your insides too much."

"Thanks for that," Ado deadpanned, passing the algiz rune back to Leo.

"Now roll up your sleeve," Leo said, reaching for a strange cylindrical device and a bowl of black liquid.

"What are you doing now!?" Ado moaned, slouching in his chair.

"I was going to tattoo the rune on your shoulder," Leo said with a wink.

"Do you have to?"

"No, but it'll look cool."

"Then get that shit the hell away from me."

Leo sighed in defeat, placing the tattoo gun and ink back on the countertop.

"Fine. Pussy. We still have some tests to do before I can accurately say what kind of 'protection' element you're in tune with."

Ado paled at his brother's malicious smile.

"I'm not going to like this, am I?"

* * *

Leo panted, sinking back against the countertop two hours later.

"Okay…" he gasped. "Okay. I think… I got a good handle… on what your alignment is…"

Ado, on the other hand, had barely moved from his chair and sat perfectly still and unmolested. Fire had danced around him; ice crystals had formed around his feet; wind had blown at his hair and all kinds of other magical phenomena had happened inches away from him at Leo's behest. But nothing had touched him.

"So?" Ado asked impatiently. After the first hour he'd just gotten bored.

Leo gulped a deep breath, composing himself.

"Dispelling. You're a protection mage, aligned with dispelling; a pretty rare origin for anyone to have, really. Yay for you. If a fight, you're a meat-shield."

"Excuse me?" Ado asked.

Leo waved the comment away.

"Think WoW," Leo explained. "I'm like a DPS, since my affinity is mostly for offensive magic. Dad's a Buff, and you're a Tank. With proper training you'd be pretty well untouchable; kinda over-powered, if we factor in your military training, really."

"But all I've done is my basic and a few guard postings," Ado said, trying to understand everything Leo was saying. "I've never even shot my gun off of a training range!"

"Believe me, it's more than any other magus will ever get," Leo explained, running a hand over his hair, careful not to disturb the pony-tail. "You've got weapons training; unarmed combat training; survival training. You're fitter, stronger and faster than most magi ever become without the aid of magic. Considering your origin 'dispelling' you're going to be fucking untouchable."

Ado snickered despite himself. "So now all we need's a healer and our party'll be complete, huh?"

Leo chuckled back. "I can do a little healing with the runes, but it's really not my strong-suit. Besides, I just used my most potent healing rune on you anyway."

The older brother stood up, approaching his sibling and flexing his left arm, the blue-white magic crest springing back to life and rotating slowly beneath his skin as he walked.

"We may as well get this over with," Leo said soberly. "Give me your left arm."

Ado gulped and nodded, pulling up his left sleeve. Leo hesitated a moment, grinning sadly.

"I really don't know who this is going to hurt more," he said softly. "Me or you."

Before Ado could respond Leo acted, the magic crest stopping its cycle as Leo's fingers dipped into his own arm like it was a liquid, grimacing in pain the entire time. Just as fast his hand shot back out, impacting Ado's arm like a punch covered in nails or barbed wire, a loud slap echoing through the room. Ado hadn't screamed when Leo had opened his circuits; now he let out a shriek as if his soul were being torn apart. The feeling of fire beneath his skin returned ten times worse than before, emanating from the glowing blue symbol on his bicep as Leo stepped back, sweating profusely.

"Don't fight it," Leo gasped. "Let it do its thing."

Ado desperately wanted to ask what 'its thing' was, but he could feel tendrils in the fire that was his nerves, reaching out and merging with something he instinctively knew were his magic circuits.

Images flashed before his eyes; the accumulated memories of the generations of Sigmund men that had worn the crest before Leo had, but they were muddled, like he was watching a show with poor reception. He saw his father kneeling before a man in white in a castle; his brother, grinning through the pain as his tattooist raked the needles over his shoulder blade; a knight, hundreds of years ago, wading through a battlefield in the crusades; their great grandfather, escaping from German soldiers during World War Two…

The images came to a halt as he zeroed in on one image in particular.

A man in plaited steel armour and a domed helmet, lying dying on a frozen beach as his comrades were slain around him. The Viking warrior looked up to the sky, his vision filled with…

"Ado? Ado!?"

Ado snapped back to reality, his vision full of his brother's face looking down at him.

"Have a nice trip?"

Ado blinked a few times. He was on his back on the floor; he must have fallen at some point. Leo stepped back, holding a hand over the spot on his arm the magic crest had been taken from.

"What did I just see?" Ado asked groggily, sitting up and rubbing his head.

Ado returned to leaning on the counter as Ado unsteadily pulled himself to his feet.

"I gave you the core of the family magic-crest," Leo explained. "It's the first part; the part that was given to our ancestor Sigmund when he joined the Einzbern family centuries ago. That was the sum of our genealogy. See anything good?"

"I watched you cry like a bitch getting a tattoo," Ado said without thinking as he flexed his left arm, wincing and holding a hand to the fist-sized glowing symbol.

Leo shuddered.

"Good for you," he said sourly. "I got to watch the act of our father's procreation."

Ado gagged. "That is so fucking gross."

"I don't want to talk about it," Leo mumbled.

"Well," he added, standing and brushing off his hands. "We're done for now."

"What?" Ado asked. "That's it? I don't get any fancy runes or a magic wand?"

A vein above Leo's eyebrow twitched.

"If you ever say the 'w' word again I'll stab you. Never say the 'w' word or make _any_ Harry Potter references around other magi. It demeans us all, and dad and I'll be laughed out of the Clock Tower."

"Ah," Ado said, grinning evilly. "Why? Did the muggles learn too much about you from it?"

Leo reached behind him, grabbing a short black-bladed dagger and advancing on Ado. "You thought I was joking, didn't you?"

"No!" Ado laughed, backpedalling. "No! Expelliarmus! Expelliarmus!"

"Oh you are so fucking dead."

* * *

That afternoon Leo, Ado and their father sat in the dining room discussing the next part of Ado's life.

"So this… Holy Grail War," Ado asked, massaging his temples and trying to understand everything he'd just been told. "Why exactly am I fighting in it?"

All he understood so far was that he was being entered into a magical-gang-war.

"The Grail chooses seven masters to fight for the honour of claiming it every sixty years," their father explained calmly. "However the gap between the fourth and fifth wars was… shorter than the usual buffer period, and a lot of innocent people got caught in the crossfire as unprepared and unworthy masters fought. The last war was fought primarily by High School students, according to the reports, a lot of whom had little or no prior warning that they were being chosen as masters. The master representing the Einzbern family in the fourth war, Kiritsugu Emiya, knew almost a decade in advance, as did many of the masters from that war and those prior to it. It appears we still have some time yet, so you two will be flying to Germany for your training and preparations."

"Dammit," Leo groaned, letting his head fall backwards. "I hate that fucking castle."

"Germany?" Ado asked incredulously, much more animated than his brother. "But I just got my citizenship here! I just made it into the army! I don't even speak German!"

"All irrelevant compared to the Grail War," their father said coldly. "This is the be-all, end-all reason for our family's existence. We can use magic to implant the knowledge of the German language directly into your memory. I'll say this plain; the life you knew is over, son."

Ado's head spun. First the revelation that he was in a family of magic users, something that up until about four hours ago had been pure fiction, and now this?

"For how long?" Ado asked numbly.

Their father shrugged awkwardly.

"I'm not sure, to be honest," he said. "The head of the Einzbern family, our master, has said that the Grail has become unstable due to the massive strain put on it by being completed and unused in the last two wars. It could be a week. It could be ten years. As I said, the usual waiting period until about fifteen years ago was sixty. Since then it appears to be getting shorter and shorter every time."

"I don't care about the grail, I care about having to go AWOL to do this!" Ado half-shouted.

Their father shook his head.

"Don't worry about that," he said, sliding a sheet of paper across to him. "Ado Sigmund died last night in a car crash."

Ado's eyes widened as he looked at the certificate of his own death. Just how much reach did the Einzberns have, that they could pull this off in Australia?

"So… I'm never coming back?" Ado asked in a quiet voice, the reality of the situation sinking in.

Their father shook his head sadly.

"If it's any consolation, neither am I," Leo offered quietly.

Ado sighed. He'd _just_ started his life here, and now…

"This is bull-shit!" he shouted, slamming his hands down on the tabletop and pushing himself to his feet. "You expect me to just go to Germany because of some mage war I've never even heard of? Give me a fucking break! And you already killed me on paper without my consent!? Do I not get a say in this at all!?"

"No, you don't!" their father exploded, rising to his feet and grabbing the front of Ado's shirt. "Whether you like it or not you're a part of this now! I did my best to shield you from this life, but it's your duty to see this through now!"

"My duty or yours?" Ado asked in a low voice, slapping his father's hand away.

"Our duty," their father responded. "Our whole fucking family's duty since its inception! Three hundred years ago! Five generations of Sigmunds! Why do you think we even exist!? The Sigmunds are the Einzberns shock-troops, son; we're the ones they call when something needs doing that they can't trust anyone else to get done."

"That's bull," Ado said weakly, turning away.

"Regardless, you're going to see this through."

Ado glared over his shoulder, the newly implanted magic crest on his bicep flashing dangerously through the thin fabric of his shirt.

"Like I have a choice in the matter."

* * *

_Cairns, Australia – 5 Years, 11 Months Ago_

Ado sighed, dropping his bag near the door. One duffel bag. That's what his life had been reduced to. One freaking duffel bag. Leo sauntered up, dropping his own matching bags and his guitar's hard-case.

"Go grab your snowboard," Leo whispered conspiratorially. "I'll distract dad; you get the board and the guitar into the back of the taxi while I do."

Ado grinned with relief and nodded, rushing back downstairs. He always thought that if his brother put his powers to use for good he'd accomplish so much more. Even after the little conversation with their father, Leo was still on his side.

When he returned to the main floor Leo was animatedly talking to their father, and the old man's back was turned. Ado discreetly grabbed Leo's guitar and slipped out the open door to the waiting taxi, guitar under one arm and snowboard under the other. Why he had a snowboard in tropical Far-North Queensland was a mystery, even to him, but when he'd bought it on the last family trip to Ottawa he knew he'd never be able to part with it.

"More coming," Ado told the taxi driver, an Indian man who was leaning lazily against his car with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

He nodded disinterestedly, loading the snowboard and guitar case while Ado went back for the actual luggage. He had one duffel bag; Leo had two, although one was full of important books and scrolls that they would need for Ado's training and Leo's continued study.

"I'll go with you as far as the terminal," their father said when Ado returned to the house's entryway. "After that you're on your own; I will go to London and supply any intelligence on other masters I can from the Clock Tower. Treat the Einzbern envoy that meets with you with the upmost respect when you get to Berlin; we're a branch family, understand?"

Ado waved his father's concern off. "Yeah, yeah, Leo explained all that crap to me already. I'll behave."

The Sigmund family was a 'branch family' of the Einzberns; the Einzbern family was one of the 'big three' as Leo liked to refer to them; Alchemist Einzberns, creators of the vessel for the Holy Grail. Ado supposed he was supposed to be impressed by the huge honour of simply being associated with such a prestigious magus family, but it was just another empty name to him. Ado and his father glared at each other across the room; to say things had been tense between them for the last month would be an understatement; Ado felt he had a right to be pissed, while his father insisted it was his duty to fight in this battle royale whether he wanted to or not.

"I make no promises," Leo said mischievously to diffuse the obvious tension.

"Ado, you have my permission to kill your brother and carry out this mission alone if he embarrasses our family," their father said, taking all three duffel bags in one hand and effortlessly carrying them to the idling taxi.

Ado shook his head, glaring at the man's back silently as he followed.

"Please tell me you two are joking, right?" Leo asked plaintively as he followed them. "Uh, Ado? Dad? No-one's killing me, right? Right?"

* * *

The taxi pulled out into the street, Ado and Leo both sitting in the back. Their father would be following on his bike, 'just in case'. It was past midnight; of course all international flights into or out of Cairns came at ungodly hours. Every time the family went to Canada for skiing trips and to visit their distant relatives they had to be at the airport at around two-am, so this was nothing new for Ado, but…

"Hey," he said, perking up and looking out the window as the taxi pulled to a stop at a red light. "There's that creepy-ass dog again."

The same dog that Ado had seen on the first morning that he'd received his 'command seal' was sitting on the street corner, watching the taxi the same way it had watched Ado a month ago.

"What!?" Leo asked, leaning over Ado to get a better look before cursing and falling back into his own chair.

"Driver, there's a five hundred dollar tip in it for you if you get us to the airport in fifteen minutes," Leo said, running a hand through his hair.

He'd given up tying it back and shaving his entire face, sporting a neat moustache-goatee combo like their father while his long brown hair fell about his shoulders. At least he combed it now, though.

"It's a forty-five minute drive with traffic, sir," the driver replied. "But it's late, so I should be able to get you there in thirty."

"Make it twenty," Leo said, looking out the back window as the light went green and they pulled into the intersection.

"It's a familiar," Leo muttered to Ado, looking out all of the windows. "Someone's already on to us."

"That's… bad?" Ado asked.

"The Grail Wars have been getting really out of hand recently," Leo explained. "Mercenaries, outside magi, gratuitous property damage… apparently they want to nip you in the bud before you become a threat."

Ado sighed and leaned back. "Lovely. First time I step foot outside the house in a month, and someone already wants me dead."

"Welcome to my world," Leo muttered, still scanning the empty streets around them. "Except I don't even have to leave the house for people to want me dead."

"Well if you'd be a little less of an ass-hole…" Ado said with a grin as he turned to look out the back window.

The light from their father's bike was still behind them, ten meters back, following undoggedly.

"Does he know about the familiar?" Ado asked.

"He probably knew about it before we left," Leo scoffed, spinning to sit properly in his seat. "The old bastard has the sixth sense like you would not believe."

"Just pretend for a moment I don't know what that means," Ado said sarcastically, returning to his own seat.

"The 'sixth sense' is what we call it when you can feel magical energy or presences. With training it can get stronger, but dad's is… well, he's known as 'the Bloodhound' at the Clock Tower."

"Really?" Ado asked. "He's… that big a deal?"

"That's why he got so pissed at you," Leo explained, looking down at his hands.

"He bucked a lot of traditions by moving here and keeping you and David. He made a lot of enemies; other magus families have a weird sense of self entitlement, and when they came sniffing around you for adoption he put his foot down and moved us here."

"Why am I only hearing this for the first time now?" Ado asked seriously.

"It's the way of a magus," Leo shrugged with a sad smile. "We live on a strictly need-to-know basis."

Ado sank back into the chair, his world being rocked again. Before he could have time for this new information to sink in there was a loud crash from behind them, and the ground shook.

The taxi driver cursed and tried to swerve to a stop, but Leo suddenly had the black-bladed dagger in his hand, held to the driver's neck.

"That tip just went up to a thousand," Leo deadpanned. "Drive. Your life depends on it."

Ado looked back through the rear window of the taxi as it accelerated. A fire had exploded out of nowhere, and his father had pulled his bike to a stop just outside of the flames.

"He'll be fine," Leo said, not looking back.

As Ado watched their father spread his arms out, his hands disappearing into twin circles of golden light before drawing them back out, a straight-bladed short sword clutched in each hand. Then the fire moved, consolidating around a big shadow standing in the centre, looking to Ado like he was waving his hands like Mickey Mouse from that Fantasia scene. The fire took up the form of some sort of quadruped animal, its flaming maw closing in on their father as Ado watched, heart jumping into his throat. Before the taxi screeched around the corner Ado watched his father, moving much more nimbly than he'd ever seen the man do before, leap to the side and roll clear, rising in a fluid motion and…

They passed the corner.

"Just what the hell have you gotten me into?" Ado asked in a whisper as he sank back into his seat.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Note**

**I would like to state, for the record, once and for all, that **_**Carnival Phantasm**_** is quite possibly one of the greatest anime I've ever seen in my entire life. Period. Look it up if you haven't. That is all.**

**I would also like to express my excitement for the June 2014 release of the first Fate/Stay Night Complete Material book in english. This means I no longer **_**have**_** to learn to read Japanese, and I can continue to get away with just pretending to speak it. Have I already pre-ordered it? You bet your sweet bippy I have. *thumbs up for free advertising***

**The cover art for this particular story is the **_**Fate/Extra**_** command seal, and has been provided by 'tseon's' deviant art page (considering it was advertised as 'free to use'; tseon, this is me crediting you; I can't post links on this site).**

**Have I got anything to **_**actually**_** say about the story in this AN? Nope. Enjoy more scene setting and character introductions (not all OCs this time, I promise). Once again, don't hesitate to contact me if you have something requiring clarification. Or spot an error; I quite often wind up making an arse of myself by skimming while I do my character research.**

**Read, review and enjoy.**

* * *

**Chapter 2**

_Cairns International Airport, Australia – 5 Years, 11 Months Ago_

The airport lounge was deserted. Leo and Ado would be catching a private jet, courtesy of the Einzbern family that would take them the entire way, only stopping for fuel twice during the twenty-odd-hour trip.

The poor taxi driver, a thousand dollars richer for his troubles, had sped off into the night, leaving the two Sigmunds to clear customs and wait in the silence of the empty departure lounge. Although to be more accurate one would say they were waved through customs without even getting their bags x-rayed; another perk of the Einzbern family influence. If they had been x-rayed no doubt Leo's Azoth dagger would have raised some eyebrows. And alarms. And probably wind up getting the Australian Federal police involved…

They would have looked quite the sight, both wearing jeans and jackets and one actually leaning against a snowboard in the tropics. Leo thanked god at that moment for the invention of air conditioning. Leo could see his baby brother was shaken up by the events of the night; he was still new to the world of magi. Unfortunately this was pretty much business as usual for Leo and his father; the old man hadn't been lying in his description of Sigmunds acting as shock-troops for the Einzberns.

The Einzbern family had chosen the route of focusing solely on alchemical magics, leaving them woefully lacking in the offensive magic department; which was why there were so many secret Einzbern branch families. Sigmund, Hoffman, Fuhrmann, Kappel, and a multitude of other families situated around the world acted as the soldiers and spies for the Einzberns, who were said to have 'no branch families'.

Leo loved repeating that line to himself every time he spent their money on booze and weed when he was supposed to be working; self-righteous snobs deserved it in his mind. But the world was getting smaller now, and the Einzberns were having more and more trouble keeping the existence of its branch families secret in the age of technology.

Being so far south the Sigmund family had stewardship of most of the southern hemisphere, not to mention all of Australia. Fortunately no significant ley lines passed through or even near the island nation, so there was never any real work to do for him or his father; usually just simple resource gathering for rare minerals or plant materials that grew in the harsh Australian desert that would be required for the Einzberns alchemical pursuits. In a way, it was putting the Sigmund family's not inconsiderable skills to waste; Leo had graduated at the top of his class at the Clock Tower, hence his Azoth dagger which had been used to 'encourage' the taxi driver.

Leo sighed, clearing his thoughts and trying to focus on their mission. The question now was not why, but 'who' had attacked them?

"What the hell happened back there?" Ado asked, giving voice to his older brother's thoughts.

Leo shrugged. "Who knows? As far as half the magical world is considered right now, you're public enemy number one, so it's not such a surprise."

"Why me?"

"You're an unknown," Leo said honestly, his voice echoing around the cavernous departure lounge.

"If it was me that got the seal, no one would have batted an eyelash. My skillset is pretty common knowledge, if you have the right connections to obtain said knowledge. You? No one knows what you're capable of. Hell, you're probably more talented than I am."

"I'm just in the reserves, though," Ado persisted. "Why is that such a threat?"

"Look at this from their perspective," Leo said, trying a different approach. "I'm a trained, qualified magus with about three years field experience and a still-growing repertoire of skills. I'm considered dangerous by the magic association, a 'first class' mage. You're an untested second-born who, until a month ago, was blissfully ignorant of the dormant magic circuits inside of you and the long, violent history of our family. Out of the two of us, you were chosen as a master for the Grail War, which is usually meant to be a Magus of considerable standing. Who would you be more afraid of?"

"The unknown quantity," Ado agreed sullenly.

Leo reassuringly patted his brother on the shoulder.

"Cheer up, bro," he said with as much good humour as he could muster. "In a few hours we'll be on a private jet. Those things have mini bars, man!"

"Feeling like I could use a full bar right about now…" Ado grumbled, sinking his face into his hands.

* * *

_Elsewhere, Cairns – 5 Years, 11 Months Ago_

"Please," the Indian taxi driver begged, falling and trying to crawl away. "I've told you… told you everything I know! Please don't kill me!"

The big man in black military-style clothes advanced slowly on him, drawing a pistol from his hip holster.

"Please!" the driver begged desperately. "I have a family!"

The big man hesitated, before shrugging and levelling the gun, pulling the trigger once and painting the tarmac with the contents of the driver's skull. The poor bastard probably didn't know anything, but he was under orders; no witnesses. The other men around the taxi depot finished their preparations and returned to the idling van, climbing in silently.

With a quiet sigh he slapped the side of the van twice as he strode by it, ignoring the corpses of the other taxi drivers that had been on duty that night, a neat little hole between the eyes of all seven men courtesy of his sniper Olaf, walking past them back to the idling Mercedes sitting just outside the gateway. Olaf would already have withdrawn and be making his way back to base. The other boys had inserted quickly, cleanly and gotten the job done. Things were going well now after the cock-up with the old man on the bike.

Alex Tahuk liked to think of himself as a patient man; nothing was more terrifying in his mind than a giant of a man with a calm, but threatening, disposition like his late father had been in possession of. That, coupled with his clan's traditional facial tattoos, were often said to be an incredibly intimidating sight. Besides, in his line of work, a calm disposition definitely helped to smooth things over when the mission went awry.

"We got the witnesses," he said as he climbed into the back of the car, the driver instantly knowing to begin moving as the van sped off in the opposite direction.

Tahuk waited a few seconds as the distance between them and the depot grew before drawing a detonator out of his pocket and depressing the red button on its top. The taxi depot and all the corpses where instantly vaporized in the ensuing explosion, as well as most of the neighbouring buildings.

"But the sons got away," a quiet, cultured voice said in a menacing tone from the shadows of the other side of the passenger compartment as the roar of the explosion died down. "And the father too. I should have known better than to underestimate the Bloodhound. Oh well; lesson learned."

Tahuk nodded, remaining silent and watching uneasily as the shadows remained static despite the bright light from the street-lamps they drove beneath. In twenty years as a mercenary and assassin Tahuk had met and killed all types; in that time his paths had crossed with the Magi Association more than once, but it wasn't until recently that his benefactor had revealed a startling truth to him; that Tahuk was himself a magus.

It wasn't surprising he'd been overlooked, apparently; not many master mages went to the small island nation of New Zealand, and if they did it was never for talent hunting. So Tahuk had been free to follow his life of crime, crisscrossing the world from warzone to warzone, killing for money. He'd fought for revolutionaries in Africa; drug cartels in South America; taken more than his fair share of targets in North America and Europe. But dealing with the Association always left a sour taste in his mouth.

It wasn't that he didn't like killing magi; quite the contrary, it was thrilling to hunt something so dangerous. But he hated working for them.

The nameless man shifted within his cocoon of shadows, his piercing purple eyes glinting in the darkness as they glared at Tahuk.

"I hired you for a reason, Mister Tahuk," the man said.

A vein above one of Tahuk's eyes twitched; he knew where this conversation was heading.

"Hardly the most auspicious start to our contract, wouldn't you say?"

'Blow it out your arse' Tahuk wanted so desperately to say as he glared into the two purple orbs, but the bigger man held his tongue, rubbing at the red marks on the back of his left hand subconsciously.

The three red marks of a command seal.

"I suppose I'm stuck with you, though," the other man sighed theatrically, noticing Tahuk's movements and looking away, no doubt with a superior smirk on his face.

"After all," the other man said, waving his hand lazily and prominently displaying his own command seal, "We're partners. Right?"

"Right, Mister Zolgen," Tahuk ground out distastefully.

He'd be a whole lot happier when he was back at the hotel and could get away from the bloody magus for a little while.

* * *

_Cairns International Airport, Australia – 5 Years, 11 Months Ago_

Ado sighed as he watched the second hand on his watch pass the twelve, signalling another hour gone by spent in utter boredom. The plane was almost ready to go, according to the gorgeous and peppy flight-attendant that had approached the two brothers. Leo had done the talking; Ado was ashamed to admit that every time a beautiful woman came within a certain radius of him he became tongue-tied and… well, stupid. It was a curse.

Ado ran a restless hand through his hair, longer now than it had been a month ago. Usually he kept it neat and trimmed, shaved almost completely as part of the military regulations. Now it was longer, and it felt weird and cumbersome. He resolved to shave it once they got to Germany.

Germany… _Fucking Germany…_

It still astounded him just how fast things were moving now. A month ago his life had been going exactly the way he'd wanted it to. Now he'd been picked up, patted on the head and told to walk a completely different path with a gun in his back for motivation.

He'd never see the cute girl at the muffin place again…

He'd never get to laugh with the cute girl at the game store again…

Never work up the courage to ask out that cute girl that worked at the grocery store…

"Huh," Ado mumbled, rubbing his head again.

"What?" Leo asked without looking up from whatever cheap sci-fi novel he was reading.

"I just realized there are a lot of cute girls I'm leaving behind here."

"Cairn's is full of dogs, bro," Leo said with a small grin. "Just wait til we get to Europe. Big strong boy with your accent'll be beating them off with a stick."

Ado glanced over at his brother.

"I'm glad I'm not doing this alone at least," he admitted.

"Wait until I start teaching you magic," Leo grinned over the top of his novel. "Then see if you can say that again."

* * *

_Reef Hotel-Casino, Australia – 5 Years, 11 Months Ago_

Tahuk held the door open for his employer as the smaller man stepped into the lavish hotel room, walking with his back straight and hands clasped behind his back. Most of the hotel rooms Tahuk had ever stayed in could collectively fit into the suite that Makiri had rented and still leave breathing room, but still his employer had complained about the size and the 'drab' interior.

In a way it was strange to be working directly for someone, rather than through a shell-company or agent, but the handsome young man had paid cash up-front, set up a very large budget for the operation, and then given him the command seals; in more than one way, Zolgen owned him now. Zolgen even expected him to train in magecraft every day, in addition to his other duties though, so Tahuk had been forced to defer duties he usually took care of himself, like security and duty rosters, to other members of the team he'd set up; another uncomfortable and unfamiliar feeling for him.

He was just thinking of retiring to his room and doing a little light reading when a voice called out from the main seating area of the spacious central room.

"Good evening, Vadim," a man's voice called out from the mostly darkened room. "My, haven't you grown up in the last couple of years?"

Tahuk acted on instinct, one hand slapping at the light switches while the other dropped to the pistol at his hip, the gun coming up almost as fast as the lights. Sitting in a large armchair was the man that his employer had called 'the Bloodhound'; the old man from earlier that night that had summoned two swords out of thin air and taken apart three of his best men and Tahuk's fire-manipulation spell without breaking a sweat before disappearing into the night. He didn't waste any time, firing three shots off in quick succession and smirking when they all hit him in the chest. His smirk dropped when the man didn't even flinch as the bullets passed right through him.

"Not very polite, is he?" the Bloodhound said offhandedly as Zolgen approached.

"Put it away, Tahuk," he said in a strained voice. "This is just a projection. Apparently he lacked the fortitude to face us directly."

Tahuk did as he was told, not quite understanding what was going on but falling in at his employer's shoulder all the same.

"What's wrong, Medvedev?" the Bloodhound asked, referring to Zolgen with a strange name. "Not happy to see one of your old instructors?"

"Good evening, Sigmund," Zolgen said with forced cheer. "You look well for a man pushing sixty. And the name is 'Zolgen', now, by the way."

"The power of good breeding," the Bloodhound responded with a wry grin. "Something I hear your family wouldn't know too much about lately."

A vein above Zolgen's eye twitched, but he kept his calm, sighing theatrically instead.

"You can drop the 'piss him off until he lets some information slip' routine, Sigmund," Zolgen said irritatedly, holding up his left hand and displaying the command seal on it.

"I assume you wanted to see this for yourself?"

"That's not entirely true," Sigmund's projection said, rising to its feet and taking a few idle steps towards the window.

"I also wanted to check in on how the new 'Zolgen' scion is holding up. It's a bold move for a branch family, taking the ancient name of the main family, even when the entire main family's dead. You must be looking to piss a lot of people off. And hiring mercenaries? Non-magical mercenaries, to boot? Your ancestors must be rolling over in their graves."

"You are beginning to try my patience, Sigmund," Zolgen growled.

"Good," Sigmund said, grinning as he spun on his heel, facing them again. "Because the Einzberns and Tohsakas are about as pissed off about your bull-shit as I am, if not more-so. You're out of allies, boy, and if you don't pull your head in you'll wind up in a pine box."

"Well," the projection added, eyes flashing towards Tahuk. "You're out of allies that don't expect a pay-cheque."

"Keep it up, Sigmund," Zolgen said, his calm veneer returning. "I was going to offer your sons a quick death, but the more you push me the longer and more painful their deaths become."

"By all means, have at them," the projection laughed. "It's your funeral. You think I'm scary in person? Face down my boys."

"Enough," Zolgen grunted, his magic crest appearing as glowing light through the sleeve of his expensive suit.

"Before you dispel me, one last thing," Sigmund said, his projection starting to flicker like a candle going out. "Mister… Tahuk, was it?"

Tahuk nodded mutely, crossing his arms across his chest and sinking to a hip as he glared at the dying projection.

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Sigmund said casually with a light bow. "A quick word of advice. Zolgens, Makiris, Matous, whatever they choose to call themselves, they're all vampires. Give that whatever connotation you wish."

Tahuk's employer snapped his fingers, and Sigmund's projection fluttered out, leaving behind a faint smell of burnt air.

"Impudent fool," Zolgen growled, gripping the arm that his crest had appeared on and grimacing in mixed pain and irritation.

Tahuk didn't know the particulars of Zolgen's crest beside the fact that it was much, much more advanced than his; compared to the little fist sized marking that showed up on the big man's bicep when he cast magic the lights that decorated his employer's arm and shoulder were much more impressive.

As Tahuk watched Zolgen took a deep breath, rolling his neck and turning to face the mercenary. He almost, almost recoiled when he saw the small shapes writing beneath the skin on the left side of Zolgen's neck, but held the urge in check.

"We're done here," Zolgen said simply, heading for his room. "Have your men prepared for departure tomorrow morning."

"Yes sir," Tahuk said, watching as his employer retreated to his room, still clutching at his left arm.

The big mercenary stood perfectly still a moment, staring at the closed door of his employer's room as it shimmered, protective wards powering up now that the room's master was present within. With a shrug Tahuk made his way to his smaller, but no less fancy, room off to the other side of the suite, pausing again to look at the holes he'd shot in the chair.

"What a waste," Tahuk mumbled, shaking his head as he proceeded to his room.

* * *

Vadim Zolgen growled, the sound reverberating low in his chest as he willed the crest worms in his left arm to still and cursed himself a fool for losing his temper at the Sigmund patriarch.

A few more deep breaths and the worms quieted, growing dormant again within the flesh of his arm.

Zouken Matou, the last patriarch of the Matou family which had once been the proud Zolgen family nearly a thousand years ago, had been a monster; a vampire that had fed on the life-force of others for centuries to extend his own life, driving the family to ruin in his quest for the Holy Grail and immortality.

But that didn't mean that his research had been 'evil', only used for evil.

In the end the last child of the Matou family, Shinji Matou, had died during the fifth grail war with no magic circuits, no crest and no hope of continuing the family thaumaturgy himself.

No great loss, in Vadim's opinion; the Medvedevs had been more than talented enough to continue in his stead.

Sure, he could have tried breeding the boy with one of his distant cousins in Vadim's own Medvedev family to jump-start the family's connection to the magi world again, but the chance had been taken away before they had barely begun to explore the possibility.

It had been a blessing that Zouken's adopted granddaughter had given him the opportunity to attain all of his research and resources when she had sold off the Matou assets after the fifth war, one he had expended considerable resources outbidding other magus families to attain.

Vadim flexed his left arm, keenly aware of the slumbering crest worms within it.

He knew that the combining of crest worms from Matou thaumaturgy and his own family's magic crest was a great heresy; in fact, the two forms of magic were incompatible. It was only due to Vadim's intense research that he was still even alive, and only his sheer force of will that he was still functioning as a normal human.

In Zouken's personal journals had been detailed information on, among other various sickening depravities, the Matou master of the fourth Grail War's implantation with crest worms.

Kariya Matou had lasted a year. Vadim had absorbed twice as many worms as Kariya had nearly three years ago now, and every day his research brought him more control; more power over the parasites.

That pride had been Zouken's downfall. The Medvedev method of absorbing pure life-force from the prana in the air itself had been the perfect place to start researching the methods needed to control the worms.

After all, if the parasites were fed from an outside source, they would not need to feed off a magus' own essence.

It had been painful at first; in fact Vadim had been hesitant to try at all, putting off the journal entries and hand-written grimoires as the deluded ramblings of a madman that he'd wasted a fortune on. It wasn't until Vadim had checked, double and then triple checked the theory behind Zouken's forbidden thaumaturgy that he had finally steeled his resolve and plunged into the worm pit.

Vadim had emerged from his physical and spiritual torture even more powerful than before; the crest worms hadn't merely given him additional power, but all of the combined magical knowledge of the Matou bloodline at his fingertips. Combined with the more passive Medvedev theory, Vadim had created a hybrid thaumaturgy of such power he'd felt obligated to revive the ancient family name.

The Zolgen clan was revived, with the Medvedev family at its core and Vadim at its head as more and more branch families flocked to his leadership by the day.

The young man grinned, the worms writhing beneath his flesh in time to his excitement.

And Sigmund said he was out of allies? He had an army at his disposal.

The Grail was as good as his and his dream of a Zolgen-led magi empire within his grasp.

* * *

_Cairns, Australia – 5 Years, 11 Months Ago_

Vadim Medvedev… what a troublesome pain in the ass the boy had become.

Eric 'Bloodhound' Sigmund sat in one of the thick leather armchairs in his darkened living room, pondering the conversation he'd just had with the brat that was presumptuous enough to take on the ancient 'Zolgen' name.

Just mentioning the name was enough to piss off an entire generation of mages; the fact that he was openly flaunting it was the hot topic back at the Clock Tower, and it even had Lord Jubstacheit nervous enough to call for Sigmund directly and risk the exposure of the Einzbern branch families, rather than through proxy the way he usually would.

Unfortunately he'd already given most of the ancient magic crest to Leo, only keeping enough to maintain his use of basic and his signature 'word' magics. But fate had a funny way of working things out…

"What an idiot," he muttered, thinking again of Vadim and becoming distracted as he looked up at the clock silently ticking away on the wall.

His two eldest sons were due to board the plane soon. He hadn't been able to see them off, but his familiars reported that they had arrived at the airport unmolested and were about to board the plane.

Despite himself a smile rose to Sigmund's lips.

Through the eyes of a familiar in the form of a local bird, a great black cockatoo, he watched the boys sitting bored in the empty terminal next to a guitar case and a snowboard.

Of course Leo hadn't cared about how far behind the taxi he needed to stay while following; the conversation had been a distraction for Ado to sneak the items past him. The boys were indeed a formidable team when they stopped fighting and cursing at each-other long enough.

He shook his head, dispelling his hold on the familiar and all the others, allowing his consciousness to return all at once to his physical form.

They were on their own now; all he could do now was provide them with the necessary information to win against the other masters. If he tried to do anything more he'd just get in the way.

At least he could put two masters down on the list; only four more to go.

Sigmund glanced up as he heard footsteps on the stairs.

"Dad?" David asked curiously, wide awake. "What are you doing up?"

Of course David was awake; the boy barely slept at all in the first place.

"Thinking," he responded, leaning back in his chair and stroking his short, neat beard.

"Tell me son," he asked in a wry tone. "How do you feel about finishing school in London?"

* * *

_Cairns International Airport – 5 Years, 11 Months Ago_

Ado hitched his duffel bag further up on his shoulder, carefully balancing his snowboard on the other as they were led through the terminal towards the private jet which was now apparently ready for them. Leo followed close behind him, a bag slung over each shoulder and his guitar case in his left hand. Ado could tell that his brother, just like him, was on alert though; they'd already been ambushed once that night.

Their flight attendant was a strange-looking woman with long pale hair that was pretty much white and red eyes that had creeped Ado out. Leo had simply taken her appearance in stride, though, so Ado had done his best to do the same; he really did need to get out of Cairns a little more. Still, though, albinos were supposed to be pretty rare anyway, so he didn't feel as guilty about being creeped out…

"I hate flying," Leo complained as they strode down the corridor after the flight attendant.

"Didn't you say something about a bar on this plane?" Ado asked over his shoulder.

"There is indeed a fully-stocked bar on this plane, sir," the attendant answered before Leo could get a snide remark in.

"Wait, you said 'full-bar', not 'mini-bar', right?" Leo asked excitedly, skipping a few steps to come alongside Ado.

"Indeed, sir," the attendant answered in a polite tone, smiling over her shoulder. "Stocked with a variety of beverages made at the private Einzbern brewery."

Ado and Leo stopped in their tracks, processing what the attendant had just said.

"Is there something wrong?" the attendant asked, turning to look at the brothers with a perplexed expression on her face.

"Private… brewery…" Leo muttered, eyes wide with shock. "You… you're taking us to heaven, aren't you? You're an angel here to take us to heaven!"

Ado recovered from the overwhelming excitement first, slapping his brother in the back of the head with the end of his snowboard by turning a little while the words 'private brewery' repeated over and over in his head.

"Let's get there first," he said before turning to the attendant awkwardly. "Please, ma'am; pay him no mind."

The attendant smiled and giggled a little.

"Of course, sir," she said, beginning to walk again. "Please, follow me."

Ado took a few steps, halting when he realized Leo was still staring off into space, no doubt imagining the contents of a private brewery belonging to a family with as many resources as the Einzberns.

"Give it a rest already," Ado muttered, grabbing Leo by the collar and dragging him along.

They followed the albino attendant to the landing strip, where the jet sat waiting, doors open and stairs beckoning. Now it was Ado's turn to hesitate.

This was the point of no return; once he was on that plane there was no going back for him. He could still turn around and try to explain that it had been a clerical error that had rendered him dead, that he'd survived the crash and spent the last month in the wilderness making his way back to Cairns on foot. He'd put the plan together the first night after their father had dropped the 'you are dead' bombshell on him, and-

"Hey," Leo said, giving Ado a little nudge in the thigh with the corner of his guitar case.

Ado turned to look at his brother. Apparently his emotions were showing on his face, because Leo smiled at him.

"Get your ass on that plane," Leo said softly with a grin. "Drinking alone makes me feel like an alcoholic."

Ado blinked a few times before steeling himself and nodding, striding up the stairs and into the jet past the patiently waiting attendant, Leo behind him.

"No, the fact that you're an alcoholic should make you feel like you're an alcoholic," Ado said with a grin of his own as he ducked through the doorway.

"Little late for a comeback, but I'll give you points for it anyway," Leo laughed as the attendant closed the hatch behind them.

* * *

"I'm telling you," Leo slurred, spilling his drink as Ado carried him to one of the reclining seats up the back of the plane that doubled as a bed. "That Crazy Train is the best. Song. Ever. Period."

"I know, Leo," Ado said, straining under his brother's weight and pre-emptively taking the half-full glass of whiskey out of his hand, setting it down before he could drop it or spill any more of it.

"No, really," Leo insisted. "Ozzy's the fucking man, man! And R…Randy Rhodes… he's… he's the Dimebag of the eighties!"

"So you've said already," Ado said with a tired sigh as he let Leo fall onto the chair-bed.

"Hey, I'm the older *hic* sibling here," Leo protested drunkenly as Ado covered him with a blanket. "I'm supposed to be putting yo dru… drunk… drunken ass to bed! Not the other way *hic* 'round!"

"So out-drink me next time," Ado laughed, switching off the light above his brother. "Or pace yourself. Either-or. There's a container next to the bed… chair… thing, in case you need to puke."

"Fuck you," Leo grumbled, rolling onto his side.

"I think you mean 'thank'," Ado chuckled. "It's pronounced 'thank' you."

Leo didn't respond, no doubt out cold already.

They'd been on the plane four hours. Four hours that Leo had spent 'sampling' every type of liquor that the Einzberns had stocked their jet with. True to the attendant's promise, it was all home-brew, and even Ado was impressed with the quality and quantity. Ado had paced himself, though; one standard drink a half-hour with a glass of water in-between. Leo had simply started chugging from the first bottle that looked like it contained whiskey and was talking shit about music within ten minutes.

With another sigh Ado bent down to wipe up where Leo had spilt some of his drink during their drunken sojourn from one end of the plane to the other. The attendant chose that point to make her appearance from the kitchen-prep area, holding a tray of food and making a dissatisfied noise as she watched Ado wipe up the spill.

"Sir, please allow me to do that," she said, setting down the tray at the same time Ado stood.

"It's alright, ma'am, I can handle a little spill," Ado said awkwardly as the attendant glared up at the taller man, snatching the dirty tissue from him.

"Sir, I don't think you fully comprehend my role here," she said, retrieving the tray and leading Ado to the seat he'd been occupying while drinking with Leo.

As an afterthought Ado grabbed the still half-full glass Leo hadn't finished in passing and drained the contents in one gulp, the harsh liquid burning its way to his stomach as Ado made a contented sigh. The Einzberns apparently knew their booze. Maybe it was like a non-magic type of practice for alchemists or something?

Ado's gaze lingered on the attractive flight attendant he was now basically alone with. Usually he'd be far, far too nervous to talk to a woman as attractive as the albino flight attendant, even if she was a little strange-feeling, but the alcohol gave him strength.

"And what would that role be, ma'am?" he asked as he sat down, the attendant placing the tray in front of him and unveiling a surprisingly good looking meal.

"As a maid of the Einzbern family it is my duty to serve the needs of yourself and your brother, master," she said, her face completely serious.

Ado snickered. He didn't want to, but he was drunk and couldn't help it. A maid that called him 'master' and 'sir'? It was like a moe character from one of the Japanese games he and Leo played had come to life.

"Why do you find that amusing?" she asked in an insulted tone, glaring down at the now sitting Ado.

"Sorry, ma'am," Ado answered. "I'm just drunk. Don't pay any attention to me."

"That's another thing, sir," the attendant, or rather maid, added. "You shouldn't call me 'ma'am'. It's improper for a master to refer to his servant thusly."

"Military training," Ado shrugged, cutting into the chicken on the plate in front of him. "I can't help it. If you don't like it, give me something else to call you."

"Ma'am," Ado added just to piss her off, shooting a cheeky grin up at the woman that he would have been wholly incapable of sober.

"Sella," the maid said, bowing slightly from the waist. "My name is Sella."

"Well, Sella, I'm Ado and the passed out oaf is Leo. It's nice to officially make your acquaintance."

"I heard that!" Leo called from the back of the plane without rolling over. "And fuck you!"

"Of course, sir," Sella said, bowing again and ignoring Leo's outburst. "Is there anything else I can do for you?"

Ado paused for a moment, putting the cover back on his food and setting it on the tray-table of the seat across the aisle from him as he chuckled at his drunken brother.

"If you have no other pressing duties to attend to you can sit down and keep me company, seeing as my travelling companion is already drop-dead-drunk," Ado suggested, indicating the seat across from him that Leo had been occupying until he'd fallen out of it.

The plane was designed so that the seats were in pairs facing each other, with the larger bed-chairs towards the back of the craft near the kitchen, bar and bathroom. Ado had been hesitant at first about putting Leo down anywhere near the bar, but the older Sigmund seemed incapable of moving under his own power at present.

Sella fidgeted a little before nodding and perching on the edge of Leo's seat.

"Tell me about the Einzberns," Ado said, leaning back and relaxing a little. "I know the basics, but what are the people and the castle staff actually like?"

Sella seemed to think for a moment.

"The staff members are all homunculi like myself," she explained. "As for the masters I cannot accurately say; I have been abroad my entire existence, seeing to the Einzbern interests mostly in Japan."

Ado nodded, his drunken mind slow to the uptake.

"Wait," he said, sitting up suddenly as he processed what she had just said. "Homunculi? What… like a homunculus?"

"Yes, master," Sella said, bowing her head without a trace of shame or… any other discernable emotion at the topic for that matter, like it was completely normal.

"As in 'man-made people'?" Leo asked again.

"That is the definition of a homunculus," Sella nodded.

"And you're… one of them?" Ado asked curiously.

Sella frowned. "Is that a problem for you, master? I assure you that I am fully capable of any and all duties required of my possi-"

"No, no," Ado said quickly, cutting off her indignant rant and struggling for the right words. "I just… I've never…"

Ado thought very hard about how to say what he was thinking without sounding like an ass.

"You're very human-like."

"We are created that way," Sella responded, calming a little but still eyeing Ado.

A thought appeared in Ado's head, his drunken mind latching onto it as an idea worthy of a Nobel Prize it was so good.

Ado reached out, poking Sella's cheek with his index finger.

"You feel pretty human, too," Ado said, drawing his hand back.

As he leaned back in his seat he realized Sella's face was red and she was quivering. So much for not being an ass…

"Oh, crap, I didn't mean to-"

"Idiot!" Sella snapped, standing and slapping Ado in the side of the head in one fluid motion. "Do you simply invade the personal space of others in Australia at leisure, or is your foolishness unique to you personally!?"

Ado reeled, his head spinning from the blow. It had actually been quite soft, barely strong enough to turn his head, but it had been surprising and he was drunk.

"Sorry ma'am!" Ado barked, falling back into military habits as he snapped to attention in his seat, eyes firmly facing forwards. "It won't happen again, ma'am!"

Ado glanced at where Sella was still standing, massaging her hand and glaring at Ado.

"I mean Sella," Ado corrected himself, relaxing and indicating to Leo's vacant seat. "I'm sorry, Sella."

The homunculus maid nodded satisfied and resumed her seat, her face still a little flushed as she cradled her hand.

"Let's pretend that didn't happen and get back to the topic at hand," Ado suggested, running a hand through his short hair.

"What are the Einzbern grounds and the surrounding area like? Please tell me there's enough space for me to use the snowboard I went through so much trouble to sneak past my father."

* * *

_The Clock Tower, London – 5 Years, 10 Months Ago_

The library of the Clock Tower was a vast sea of knowledge, a sea one could easily become lost in if they were not careful. There were no custodians, and only a single frail old librarian to monitor the giant room and tend the books, so students and full-fledged magi alike were left to their own devices in the cavernous space. In fact, it wasn't rare for a magus to use a divining spell to find a particular book or index that they were searching for.

Tohsaka Rin was not one such magus; she knew exactly what she was looking for and exactly where it was. She took one last look at the crumpled note in her hand and sighed, pocketing the paper and beginning to trudge toward the stacks.

For more than two months now she'd been the official 'protégé' of the Sorcerer Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg, one of the most long-lived and powerful magi in history, and all she'd done was random research, more often than not at the behest of a note written on pieces of scrap paper that always seemed to appear on her desk while she slept or was out. It's not like she was surprised, honestly. Schweinorg was a busy man, said to have the power to travel between realities; Rin had simply been hoping for more actual instruction.

In a funny twist of fate she'd received more instruction in the last two months from her sponsor Lord El-Melloi the Second than her actual master, even after El-Melloi had sworn to 'never give her an ounce of instruction' during their initial meeting two years ago. Granted, last month she had been about to inadvertently unravel the flow of time in an area the size of half of Great Brittan by not completing a magic circle properly and he'd been forced to intervene to avert catastrophe, but…

El-Melloi was at least always there in the background, watching over her, even if he did hate the duty; for all Rin knew, Schweinorg wasn't even in the same reality as her at present. He could even be on a completely different time-plane for all she knew! No one knew the full scope of his power, and Rin had only been able to experiment a little with the Jewelled Sword of Zelretch that was said to copy his powers on a smaller scale that she, Illya and Shirou had created to end the Fifth Grail War, so even her understanding of his power was limited.

Rin sighed as she rounded the corner of one of the massive stacks of books, starting down another aisle and looking upward, absently running her fingers over the pendant hanging from around her neck. She'd probably need to find a ladder once she got where she was going, and there was always such fierce competition for them…

She could always try manipulating the gravity around her and levitating up to the higher shelves, but last time she'd attempted that she'd levitated all the books off their shelves, too, and spent the better part of three hours putting them all back.

Rin sighed again; truth be told, if it was outside of her expertise of the five elements and she didn't have adequate time to prepare mentally, her spellcraft often went awry. Such was the apparent purpose of Schweinorg's instruction; she was to research other areas of magecraft and better acquaint herself with them 'in preparation'.

That's what the first note had said: 'in preparation'.

Rin had constantly wondered 'for what' at first, but Schweinorg apparently felt that it was more warning than she deserved, so that was all she'd gotten. She passed an opening between shelves without looking, stopping dead when something hard and flat tapped her on the head.

"This is meant to be a library," an older male voice said from above her in perfect, if slightly accented, Japanese. "So stop sighing so loudly."

Rin actually twitched before she looked up.

"Good morning, Lord El-Melloi," she said through clenched teeth, forcing a smile to her face.

"That's 'El-Melloi the Second," he grunted, frowning a little. "You always forget that part."

They didn't get along. Period. Yet somehow he was always there when she was thinking about him, for good or ill. Waver Velvet, now the only surviving master from the Fourth Grail War, grinned down at Rin as he brushed a few loose strands of his long, straight black hair out of a criminally handsome face with his left hand, proudly displaying the scars where his command seals had once been. Rin chose to cover hers with a delicate set of gloves that she wore everywhere, but that was simply her own preference.

It was too bad his attitude was so lousy, or he'd be considered a perfect catch; he was one of a rare few magi who actually took care of his physical appearance. His muscles constantly strained at his red coat and black suit, a yellow scarf slung casually across his shoulders draping down his broad chest.

Velvet had pretty much rebuilt the El-Melloi faction single-handedly after his master's death during the same Grail War, and had inherited his title afterwards despite having negligible magical skills; he was a researcher that looked like a body-builder with the attitude of a crotchety old man, in a position of supreme power among the Magi Association. In short, he was a walking contradiction. When once questioned about his constant exercising by a student he'd scoffed at them, stating that 'healthy body, healthy mind' was more than just an expression.

Rin glared up at him wordlessly before turning away and proceeding to her goal, hoping he'd get the hint.

"Why so glum, Rin-Chan?" El-Melloi asked, still speaking in Japanese as he began to follow her, ignoring the hint and displaying his infuriating habit of over-familiarization as he put the book he'd been holding down in a random spot. "Did someone die? Or did another magic napkin give you crappy advice again?"

He snickered as he followed the seething girl, knowing full well that Rin couldn't snap at him like usual in a public place or else she'd risk ruining her 'reputation'. She was regretting going into the particulars with him of her apprenticeship to Schweinorg after the time-flow incident. 'Magic napkins' was his new favourite button to push.

"Why are you following me, _sir_?" she finally grated out after they walked a few more feet, struggling with the last word and pointedly speaking in English. After all, one must show proper respect to their superiors. In public, anyway…

"Right, like I bloody want to," El-Melloi huffed in English. "I just so happen to have received a magic napkin of my own last night."

Rin halted.

"Excuse me?" she asked, turning on the taller man and no longer attempting to hide her hostility with a sweet smile that didn't come anywhere near reaching her eyes. "Care to explain what you mean by that?"

El-Melloi shrugged and held up a scrap of paper that was almost identical to the one in Rin's pocket, down to the same creases and positioning of the writing; in her master's handwriting.

"So I guess this makes us study-buddies, huh Rin-Chan?" El-Melloi said with a mocking smile.

"Don't push me," Rin said in a low, dangerous voice completely at odds with the smile plastered on her face in an attempt to maintain her reputation as a lady of cultured stock to any casual observers.

"Sir," she added in a sweet voice, her eyes promising imminent violence.

"Sheesh," El-Melloi said with a wicked grin and a wink, backing up a little as Rin's smile turned truly murderous. "That's fine; you'd only slow me down anyway. After all, I can't study if I'm helping you restock the shelves."

And with that statement he slipped around another stack of shelves and was gone, leaving an infuriated Rin standing there, wondering how exactly he knew about that incident with gravity manipulation. Taking a deep breath to compose herself Rin adjusted her gloves and, with her back straight and head high as befitting the head of the Tohsaka family, she continued to her destination, deciding to try the levitation spell again once she got there.

* * *

Waver smiled evilly to himself as he watched a flustered Tohsaka try to compose herself through the gaps between shelves, before turning his back and setting off for his real objective.

It wasn't Tohsaka's fault that she was Japanese; he'd tried reaching out to the girl when she'd been accepted to the Clock Tower a few years ago, even gotten excited and sponsored her, but she embodied every part of the Japanese culture he hated, and none of the parts he actually appreciated. Still, though, as her sponsor it was technically his responsibility to make sure she didn't break reality, so he'd been keeping a close eye on her and her experiments. He did like the girl, and he respected her dedication and drive, but he just couldn't get over the fact that she was Japanese. Born and raised in Fuyuki no less…

The last time he'd been there was nearly seven years ago now when he'd paid his respects to the departed McKenzie couple that had housed him for a time. He hadn't set foot in the country since.

Schweinorg's demands that he finish an ancient failed alchemical formula for doubling the stored mana in gemstones could wait just a little bit longer, anyway. After all, what were a few extra minutes to a man that was practically immortal?

He didn't really care what the research was for or who had asked him to do it; it was the challenge of fixing a thousand-year-old mistake that excited him. Knowing Schweinorg the old man had seen a different parallel reality where the formula would have saved the world or something and he wanted to interfere by providing it to the parallel-reality's inhabitants, but that didn't matter to Waver.

He was a researcher; a scholar. A soldier in the field of knowledge!

Waver grinned as his pulse quickened in excitement. He was on the proverbial hunt again, and he loved it.

Fortunately he'd reached a temporary impasse in his own research into metaphysical time-flows and their relationship with liquids, but all he needed was something like this to take his mind off of it for a while and let him go back to it with a fresh mind. Hell, they were both technically alchemical research; this might even give him some ideas. It wasn't unusual for Schweinorg to leave instructions or notes for the various professors lying around the Clock Tower; he was an irritatingly enigmatic bastard, and Waver had done little bits and pieces for him before, but never anything on this scale. Fortunately, Waver had been forced to dedicate a large portion of his not inconsiderable amount of intelligence to alchemy when he'd had to admit his magic circuits were truly inferior, so he had a good idea of where to start.

But first he had one other thing to do… a favour for an old friend.

"Did you get a good look?" Waver asked, leaning back against the closest stack of books seemingly at random, just before he rounded another corner.

"No," came the reply. "Of course I didn't. She was wearing gloves."

"Of course she was," Waver commented, waving his left hand around. "Most of the other surviving masters aren't as proud of their scars as I am. But I know you; you'd be able to tell even if you couldn't see them. So?"

There was a dry chuckle from around the other side of the stack.

"I'd forgotten how far my reputation preceded me these days."

"About as far as mine, I'd imagine," Waver said with his own chuckle, glancing across to the empty space between stacks.

"Maybe if you'd get out a little more," his conversation partner teased. "You're starting to look pale from sitting inside all day, Lord El-Melloi the Second. I think people are beginning to question your existence."

Waver chuckled again, bouncing his back off of the shelf and turning around the corner to look at his old friend.

"I'll ask again, Bloodhound," Waver said as he looked at Eric Sigmund, leaning against the side of the stack much the way he had been.

"Is she a master this time, too, or not?"

Eric let out a sigh and rubbed his eyes absently. He looked tired, like he hadn't gotten used to the time-zone difference between London and Cairns yet.

"Maybe?" Eric said with a shrug. "There's definitely a huge lingering aura of mana around her, but… argh, I must be getting old. I can't be sure yet. Why don't you do me a favour and go sneak your way into this Grail War, too?"

Waver scoffed. "Sorry, Eric, but once was enough for me. I'm happy to play researcher and spy for you, but I'm not fighting again."

He didn't mention that there was only one servant he'd ever be willing to summon, and he didn't feel accomplished enough to face that particular hero again yet; but Eric already knew and understood that, so he'd only made the suggestion as a joke.

"Well then I'll keep digging," Eric sighed. "Maybe I'll get lucky and another master will materialize right under my nose. Medvedev wasn't exactly subtle, but I can't say I hope the others are as blatant as he was."

"Subtlety takes all the fun out of it," Waver said with a laugh and a light shove to the other man's shoulder.

Erick grinned a little before reaching into his pocket and pulling out a folded up piece of note paper.

"Here," he said, passing it to Waver. "It's the address of where we're staying while we're in London. You should come have dinner with us sometime."

And with that statement and a parting wave, Eric Sigmund left Waver standing between book stacks, looking at a scrap of paper with his friend's atrocious handwriting on it, trying to decide if he was looking at a number six or a lower-case letter 'B'. Waver took out the note containing the instructions from Schweinorg and held it next to the one he'd just gotten from Eric.

"Funny," Waver smirked as he started off to the alchemical section of the library. "Their handwriting is just as bad as each-others."

Waver stopped, a thought occurring to him and causing him to click his fingers, summoning the puddle of mercury known as the Volumen Hydragyrum that he'd inherited when he'd taken up the title of Lord El-Melloi the Second. A shifting silver mass spread across the floor until it reached Waver's feet and halted mid-flow, condensing and rising, taking on the form of a life-sized silver maid with long, flowing hair.

"Come on, Maid-Golem," Waver said with a sigh as he began to walk again. "You can carry the books for me. And no playing 'Terminator' this time."

"Of course, master," the Maid-Golem said in a sweet artificial voice. "I promise that I will cause no serious property damage today."

Waver rolled his eyes. He should never have tried giving the Maid-Golem a sense of humour; he couldn't tell when she was joking or not anymore.


	3. Chapter 3

**Author's Note**

**Let's kick things up a notch, shall we? Let's get some action going on. I'm getting bored of simply stage-setting. Well, let's classify this as 'actiony-stage-setting'. **

**Read, review and enjoy!**

* * *

**Chapter 3**

_Somewhere in Germany - Four Years Ago_

The noise inside the helicopter was deafening, but the three occupants ignored it. Two men, wearing black combat gear knelt near the open door, looking down at the devastation below them.

An entire town was ablaze in the clear early afternoon sun, villagers in the remote hamlet running about as others reacted violently to their presence, lashing out or leaping on them like wild animals driven by the urge to feed. There was blood everywhere, quickly being mixed in with the melted snow, coating the streets in a red slush.

"It's like a bloody zombie flick, eh?" the third man, easily the oldest of the trio, wearing an old green army jacket with the Irish flag emblazoned on it over an anarchy symbol shirt said in thickly accented English around a cigarette, his long greying-red pony-tail flapping around in the wind created by the open door.

"You two sure you'll be right down there?"

The shorter of the two men nodded, flexing his left fist beneath a fingerless leather glove before simply leaning forward and dropping out the open door, no visible equipment or weapons anywhere on his person; in fact, he wasn't even wearing cold-weather gear, just average black fatigues as if he were ignorant of the fact it was below zero out.

The helicopter tilted, putting distance between drop-zone one and the designated second one.

"Right, well," the Irish man said, attaching a line to the waist of the second man with more traditional weapons and gear and giving him a light push. "Have fun then."

The second man, wearing much thicker clothing and gear, nodded, making a final check to ensure his equipment was secure before rappelling down into the blazing town beneath.

Ado landed hard, but brought his rifle, a heavily customized matte-black M-16, up instantly, scoping his drop-zone for targets through dark sunglasses to combat the snow glare and the light given off by the fire.

"Unit one is on the ground and rolling," Leo reported happily over the radio, the small speaker embedded in Ado's ear delivering the brother's report rather than a spell or charm.

"Unit two, on the ground," he said tersely, looking around at the burning buildings.

"Can 'ya hear me, lad?" the Irish man asked through the speaker in Ado's ear.

"Loud and clear, Harry," Ado replied through the mask covering the lower half of his face, rising from his kneeling position and unclipping the line. "How's it looking from up there?"

A dark chuckle answered him. "Like August 1969, lad. It's a right bloody mess."

"I meant give me tactical, Harry," Ado grunted, beginning to move in the direction of the town square. "That's why we brought your crusty old ass."

"And here I thought it was just so I could freeze my bollocks off in your bloody chopper," Harry half-grumbled, half-laughed.

"I see six bogies on the other side of the next building," Harry added more seriously. "They know you're there by the way."

Ado hesitated as six villagers came tearing around the corner, digging into the frozen soil with their hands as they skidded and roaring as they spotted Ado. There was a loud bang and one of the villagers fell, the man's head practically disappearing as the rest of his body skidded a few more feet from momentum before lying still. The helicopter made a pass over the area, Harry giving Ado a lazy salute as he pulled a large anti-material sniper rifle back into the interior. Ado skidded to a halt, dropping to one knee and taking out the legs from beneath all of the villagers still standing with precise bursts of fire from his weapon. The villagers growled as they continued trying to crawl towards Ado, slavering and biting in his direction, their eyes glowing a baleful, soulless red.

Ado sighed and sighted down the barrel again.

"_You can't reason with them; they're not human anymore"_ Leo had said during their flight over the frozen German countryside in the Einzberns chopper. _"I know it's harsh, but think zombie-movie. Just… put them out of their misery. That's the only kindness we can offer them now."_

Ado switched the M-16 to single-fire mode, and pulled the trigger five times. The villagers finally laid still. He glanced up quickly when another shot from Harry's high-powered sniper rifle echoed through the air over the sounds of the crackling flames around him.

"Harry?" Ado asked, holding a finger to his ear.

"Just a second, lad," came the response, punctuated by three shots in quick succession from his sniper rifle. "Your brother's in a spot of bother."

"Moving to assist," Ado said, heading in the direction the chopper had.

"Can't very well cover his arse and provide you with tactical, lad," Harry warned.

"Acknowledged," Ado replied, letting the clip fall out of his rifle and replacing it with a fresh one; one with a big red 'x' on the top of it.

"I can tell 'ya this, though," Harry advised. "Its tight quarters. They're in the buildings, and my thermal's shot all to hell cause'a the fire."

Ado hesitated for a moment before tucking the rifle more securely to his shoulder. That's pretty much what he'd been expecting to hear.

"Acknowledged," Ado repeated. "Any more pearls of wisdom before I start moving?"

"Just one," Harry said through the earpiece, three more shots ringing out in the distance. "Aim for the fucking heads."

* * *

Leo grinned savagely as he plummeted through the air, his long and unsecured hair whipping out behind him crazily like the trail of a comet through the free-fall.

They'd been cooped up in that mansion for two years now, and as nice as the grounds were there was only so much training to be had before one began to go stir-crazy; especially with Jubstacheit's rule against drinking. Well, mostly because of Jubstacheit's rule against drinking. That and the emotionless homunculi that were meant to pass as servants; they were almost as bad as robots. They were so boring, most of them not even comprehending what a practical joke was. God bless Sella, though; without her to vent Leo's cabin-fever on he'd have lost his mind. As it stood she still wasn't speaking to him after he'd switched her shampoo with blue hair-dye…

Leo twisted in the air, his magic crest glowing through his thick black sleeve as his descent began to slow, air rising from beneath him and letting him get his feet pointed in the right direction. A small strengthening spell in his feet and legs and he hit the ground running with enough force to crack the stones beneath him. In the same movement as his landing he slapped his left hand to the ground. His gaze snapped up at the same time spears of ice did, impaling the twelve dead apostles around him and clearing his drop zone in seconds. Leo felt some satisfaction as his magical ice faded away, looking around and pulling the mask off of his lower face; he could barely breathe through the stupid thing.

"Unit one is on the ground and rolling," Leo said, grinning as he took off at a sprint through the winding streets of…

"Huh…" Leo muttered, realizing he'd forgotten the name of the piss-ant backwater they were cleansing.

This was church-work, but Jubstacheit's people had gotten word about a magus working on something about dead apostles and decided it was a good chance to 'field test' the boys. As far as Jubstacheit was concerned this was his territory anyway, so the church could have sloppy-seconds once they were done. Besides, this was an overt show of power for the Einzberns; if Old Man Acht could get away with sending in three men and one chopper and doing most of the work then the Einzbern standing would rise a little more in the world of Magi. It was all political, every little thing that mages did; and this made Acht look all kinds of good by making him appear proactive in defending his territory.

"Think there's a liquor store in this shit-hole?" Leo asked as he ran, skidding around a corner and charging down another street like a speeding car, kicking up a spray of shattered concrete and asphalt as he went, feet digging up large gouts of stone with every magically-strengthened step. "I could really use a drink."

"It's Germany, lad," Harry answered in his ear. "I'm sure someone's got some beer around here somewhere. Be a good lad and grab one for me, too."

Leo grinned at the old mercenary's response.

Harry O'Malley had been hired by Lord Jubstacheit at Leo's urging to 'get Ado some better god-damned training'. The old mercenary was ex-IRA, but he was also Leo's kind of guy; tough and uncompromising, just the kind of man his baby brother needed as a coach. It had taken some convincing for Acht to bring in an outsider, especially a non-magi outsider, but the skills Ado needed to learn wouldn't come from another magus.

His magic classes with Sella were progressing steadily but slowly, and there was only so much a beginner magus could cope with in one day before his magic circuits decided to up and quit on him, leaving Ado with quite a bit of free time to do nothing while Leo studied and practiced his own thaumaturgy all day long, barely stepping out of his ice-box of a room for long enough to do a quick run in the evenings and have an even quicker session in the gym he and Ado had set up in one of the many, many empty rooms in the Einzbern castle; so Leo had suggested someone to train his brother further in the ways of soldiering, which was Ado's ace in the hole anyway, resulting to the fourth resident of the guest wing of the Einzbern Castle. The third being Sella; Leo didn't count the other homunculi, they were practically automatons.

Ado got to play with the snow-mobiles in the garage while Leo studied.

Ado got to take his snowboard out onto the mountain behind the Einzbern grounds while Leo compiled formulas.

Ado got to watch porn on the torturously slow and ancient dial-up internet connection in one of the rooms, which had been a nice surprise in itself, while Leo tore his hair out trying to figure out a way to make use of his little brother's unique dispelling qualities.

So far the best way they'd come up with of weaponizing his talents were-

With inhuman reflexes and agility Leo leaned back, skidding beneath the swinging claws that were now tearing through the empty space his head had just been occupying. He came up, casting as he did and three spears of ice lanced through the apostle. She might once have been an attractive young woman, but the red eyes, pale skin and liberal gore were enough to turn Leo off. One spear through the heart; one through the brain; and another through the heart, just for good luck.

These dead apostles were incomplete, though; created through alchemical means they lacked the will of a 'true' vampire and were thus closer to fictional zombies than anything else. Leo cursed loudly as a pack of them rounded the corner from the direction of the town square, running at him with ferocious bloodlust writ on their dead faces. Okay, so they were closer to 'zoombies', but Leo hated new-age zombie movies anyway.

Changing tactics Leo manipulated the prana in the air, ensnaring the fire from the buildings burning to ash around him with carefully placed wind spells and threw it in great jets over the horde. He took a step back as the apostles barely even slowed, their clothes and flesh singing and burning away regardless.

"Er, a little help here?" Leo said into the microphone at his throat, taking a few more steps back and feeding mana to the runes adding strength to his limbs and flesh in anticipation.

"Right, lad, be with 'ya in a second," Harry answered from the chopper.

Leo grinned at the man's thick accent, rolling out his neck before leaning forward again and launching himself into the apostle horde in a blast of wind, foot-long blades of ice growing from his wrists over his fists as he flew through the empty space. Four shots rang out, dropping the closest apostles as Leo barrelled into the next ones in line, ice-blades first, laughing like a mad man all the while.

It was good to get out once and a while.

* * *

Ado advanced slowly, checking corners the way he'd been taught and shooting anything that moved. These things weren't human anymore; they needed to be put out of their misery; they weren't human…

He hesitated a split second when a child, no more than eight or nine years old, looked up at him with a blood-smeared face from feeding on the entrails of what Ado assumed had once been its mother. The child-zombie-thing went down, a single neat red hole between its eyes.

That was one thing that the Einzberns seemed to have in ample supply, Ado thought in an attempt to take his mind off of what had just happened, trying not to look at the two corpses as he walked by them; the Einzberns had lots of space and lots of money for ammo, so he'd gotten in countless hours of target practice. Even without the modified scope mounted on the casing of the M-16 Harry had managed to track down for him Ado doubted he'd miss even a single shot at this range.

Speaking of Harry, the sounds of the man's favourite new toy, an M107 he'd scrounged up through his 'contacts' earlier that year, were growing closer. Ado estimated he only had to go a few more blocks and he'd be at the town centre they'd designated as the rendezvous point.

Meaning he'd beat Leo there.

Another villager roared as it leapt through a flaming doorway at him, its flesh charred and ruined on most of its face to the point Ado couldn't even tell its gender any more. Not that it mattered; another twitch of his finger, another bang, and another corpse lay on the street.

The new 'whammy-bullets' Leo had cooked up for him were working like a charm; each bullet contained a cocktail of Ado's blood and various other alchemical ingredients that activated the unique dispelling quality he had inherent to him, cutting through the dead apostles magical skin like butter and dropping the pseudo-vampire-zombies like regular people. His ammo supply of the WB shells was limited at this point, though, so he'd brought with him more traditional silver bullets. Just in case.

As much as Ado was loathe admitting it, this was kind of liberating for him; getting out of the castle, letting loose and actually getting to field-test his gear and the skills he'd spent the last year developing. Not that he'd had a chance to actually cast a spell yet.

"_Your affinity isn't for destruction, but protection," _Sella had told him during one of their earliest sessions. _"Despite what the others tell you, you're best at stopping spells that would cause others harm _because_ they cause others harm."_

Ado hesitated for another second, eying the shattered window-pane of what had once been a corner store and debating trying to use the reconstruction spell Sella had taught him to mend the glass, but the roar of Harry's rifle brought him back to his senses and he moved on, gun pointing everywhere his eyes did. The last year he'd spent under Sella's careful tutelage hadn't really amounted to much; he understood basic magic theory and mana flow, could activate his magic circuits at will and perform a few basic spells involving the five elements, mostly little things like repairing glass or, if he were lucky, lighting a candle. That was the best he could hope to achieve with the piece of the magic crest Leo had given him, anyway.

Apparently it had been mostly just to get him ready for his actual training in magical dispelling, which meant creating dead areas around himself where magic wouldn't function, barriers, removing curses and destroying weaker magical creatures and items, like familiars or projected weapons. Apparently that would be much easier for him, but the prospect of having balls of fire thrown at his head didn't exactly appeal to him.

A few more dead apostles jumped out of buildings or the gaps between them, and Ado mercilessly gunned them down.

They weren't human anymore…

He stepped out into the much cooler air of the open town square, shivering a little as he left the comparative warmth that the fires had provided. Ado took a few steps before stumbling suddenly and falling to one knee.

He reached down in confusion to the leg that had given out beneath him, wrapping his finger around something hard and cold that hadn't been there before.

"Is this… a freaking bayonet?" he asked incredulously, eyes widening as he looked down at the long, thin blade sticking out of his calf.

* * *

Leo heard Ado's question through the little speaker in his ear and hesitated long enough for a dead apostle to leap into the air above him, only to be taken out by Harry's crack shooting.

"What're you doin', lad!?" the old Irishman shouted. "Focus!"

"Ado's in trouble, and the Inquisitors are here," Leo said without preamble, lashing out with his ice-blades and cutting the top of the head off of the nearest apostle without even looking.

"Play-time's over; we gotta go."

Harry cursed vehemently, and the helicopter moved to overlook the town square in time with the man's swears. Leo took a deep breath as the dead apostles around him hovered, looking for an opening. Truth be told, Leo was having more trouble without the core of the magic crest than he had expected, and was relying almost solely on the od inside of himself now, rather than the mana he could summon. The ice-blades were duller than they usually were, and even his strength and speed were lower than usual. He could feel the muscles in his arms and legs beginning to cry out in protest at being forcibly strengthened, but with a deep breath Leo pushed them just that little bit further.

"Sorry, gotta run," he said flippantly, jumping through the air over the heads of the dead apostles and making a break for the town square, already thinking up theories on how to fix the problems. As he ran he felt something tear in his leg, but he barely slowed as he pushed the pain out of the realm of conscious thought.

"But hang around!" he added over his shoulder. "The churchies are here to play now, so go eat them!"

* * *

Ado held his rifle one-handed, dragging his injured leg with the other hand and pointing his weapon at the three priests walking towards him with unhurried strides as he hobbled backwards, leaving a thin trail of blood in his wake. Three priests each carrying handfuls of razor-sharp throwing knives as long as his gun.

"Inquisitors, am I right?" Ado asked through his mask, glad they couldn't see the pained grimace on his face. "Or are you executioners? Meh, doesn't matter. Same basic thing, right? You guys were running a little late, so we thought we'd lend a hand."

The priest in the front, a middle-aged Italian-looking man built like a running-back stopped a few feet from Ado, looking at him curiously.

"You are not an apostle," he said in thickly accented English.

"Do I look dead to you!?" Ado asked angrily, pulling his sunglasses off, his aim never faltering.

"Our apologies," the priest said, putting a hand over his heart and bowing. "We were unaware we would be receiving support on this mission."

"Stick your apologies up your ass," Ado shouted, reaching down and yanking the blade out of his leg before tossing it back to the priests.

The blood-stained bayonet landed at the Italian priest's feet with a dull clatter in the silent square.

"Along with that. Sideways. I'm an atheist."

The priest seemed to regard Ado for a moment before coming to a decision. As the man brought his hand filled with knives up, no doubt to throw at Ado for acting like a jerk-off, the distant roar of the Einzbern helicopter became much, much closer as suppressing fire from Harry forced the three priests back towards the burning houses.

"Right you Catholic bastards!" Harry shouted through the helicopter's mounted speakers as he nimbly reloaded the large gun. "Step away from the lad or you'll be getting some hot, protestant lead shoved right up your arses!"

Ado grinned at the priests' shocked looks, moments before a shape wearing black fatigues flew into the square, barrelled into Ado with all the subtlety of a freight train and leapt into the waiting chopper over the span of about three seconds.

"Up!" Leo shouted to the homunculus pilot, breathing heavily. "Get us up, dammit!"

Harry was blasting away with his rifle, swapping clips fast enough that even Ado was impressed at the old man's dexterity as the helicopter rose into the air.

"We could have taken them," Ado said dejectedly as he limped over to a seat, pulling up his torn pant leg to begin administering first-aid, acting on auto-pilot.

"First of all, we don't want to start shit with the church. They already hate me enough," Leo said, holding onto the side of the chopper and looking down on the town.

"Second," he added with a malicious grin, "I just gave them exactly what they wanted, and you're missing it."

Ado limped over to the helicopter door curiously as Harry started laughing hysterically, slapping his knees as he gently placed the M107 on the floor behind him. The dead apostles were beginning to swarm the priests from every direction, just like a scene from a zombie movie.

"That's a little harsh, don't you think?" Ado asked as they watched the priests desperately fending off the villagers with their long knives, neat black clothes become dirty and gore-stained almost instantly.

"Nah," Leo said with a chuckle. "This is just a pain in their butts. If they're really from one of the Inquisitor orders, then this is no problem for them."

Ado nodded, frowning. Before he could ask if they should at least offer firing support he watched as the Italian priest that had been their obvious leader looked up at the helicopter, and angry look marring his otherwise handsome face. With a wave of his hand he was back to fighting the apostles around him, but not before another of the bayonet-daggers embedded itself in the chopper right between Harry's legs dangling over the edge of the hatch.

"Whoa!" the Irishman shouted, leaping back into the safety of the helicopter and tugging the hatch closed, still guffawing to himself.

"I suppose that was for the protestant thing, eh? Catholics, no sense of humour…"

"I swear you must be the only protestant Irishman in existence," Leo laughed, sitting down across from Ado while Harry lit up another cigarette.

Leo grinned as he reached into his pocket, tossing a small brown bottle to Harry.

"Ah, God bless you, lad," Harry almost wept, opening the beer at the same time Leo opened his own.

"Nothing like a cold beer at the end of a long day, huh?" Leo asked, raising his bottle to the old Mercenary.

"They're warm, though," Harry pointed out.

Leo grinned, touching one finger to the edge of Harry's bottle and them his own. Ice crystals spread out from the point of contact, and Harry took a second sip and made a contented sigh.

"That's quite the talent you've got there, lad!" Harry said animatedly. "Must've made you pretty popular on the beaches back home!"

"Not as much as you might think," Leo admitted, leaning back. "Nobody wants to make out with the guy whose ambient body temperature makes him feel like a corpse. Well, there are some, but Goth chicks are kinda… creepy."

"Okay, that's all well and good," Ado said through clenched teeth before Harry could respond. "But is somebody going to give me some first aid, or shall I just sit here and bleed to death?"

* * *

Harry hopped off the chopper pretty much the moment it touched down, ushering the two Sigmunds out and towards the guest wing of the Einzbern castle looming over them and reaching for his favoured rifle.

"Alright, lads," he said cheerily. "Out! Ado, you've got the afternoon off while I clean my baby, so be in fighting shape by tomorrow!"

Leo hopped wordlessly out next, looking back to where Ado hobbled down and carefully slid to the ground, not putting any weight on his wounded leg. In the background the homunculus pilot was already beginning to run his post-flight checklist; the pale man hadn't said anything the whole time they had been flying, making Leo wonder if Jubstacheit had purposely left out any speaking abilities when he'd crafted the man.

"Butch up already," Leo grumbled, giving Ado a shove.

"Hey, fuck you man, I got stabbed," his brother responded indignantly, swaying dangerously on one foot.

"So? Do you have any idea how many scars these tattoos cover?"

"Right, right; I keep forgetting your years of experience at getting your ass kicked."

"Hey, I'm not the one that got-"

Ado and Leo were cut off mid argument by Harry cuffing both of them upside their heads.

"Shut it!" the mercenary grumbled.

They both glared at each other for a moment longer before Leo sighed and grinned, grabbing the taller Sigmund under the arm and forcing Ado to lean on him.

"Here, you big girl, if it hurts so much I'll-"

"Augh!" Ado wailed, resisting and trying to hop away from his brother. "No! No, you're covered in blood! Get away from me!"

"What? None of it's mine!"

"That's even worse! Gross, gross!"

Both Sigmunds grew quiet again when Harry cuffed them a second time.

"Honestly," Harry grumbled, turning back to the chopper. "You two are worse than girls."

* * *

Leo carried a limping Ado back through the guest quarters of the Einzbern castle, the younger Sigmund not making a peep the entire time even when he jostled the wound on his leg. They finally reached their destination, the main common room between the two bedroom suites that the boys lived out of, leaving a mixture of mud and blood footprints in the pristine hallways, their carpeted suite pristine as it always was thanks to Sella's constant ministrations.

The homunculus maid looked up as they entered, a look of anger crossing her face.

"Stop!" she said quickly, rising from where she was reading on the corner of the sofa in the common area in plain clothes, tossing a thick book to one side.

"Stop right there! I spent all day cleaning! Leo, you're filthy! And Ado's bleeding everywhere! No! Out, out!"

Leo rolled his eyes and huffed, Ado already halfway back to the door when the older sibling spun on his heel. It was a common theory that a homunculus made properly would begin to absorb the personality of its master after a period of time; Sella had already been very human-like and pushy when they'd met her, a quality that had only grown worse thanks to continued exposure to the Sigmund brothers. Her personality would have been largely from her previous master, but she'd absorbed so much 'Sigmund personality' that Leo almost thought of her like a little sister, rather than a maid.

"Yeesh, is it that time of the month again already?" Leo asked mockingly, deciding to see how far he could push the maid, hoping to get some sort of rise. "Alright, we're out of the room."

Ado's head had snapped around like a rubber band, the look of shock and horror on his face almost breaking Leo's poker face. Apparently he was going to get a rise out of someone at least…

"I do not understand your question," Sella huffed, crossing her arms.

"'That time of the month?'" Leo repeated. "You know… Wait. Do homunculi even have menstrual cycles?"

"I don't think we need to have this conversation!" Ado cried desperately, his shock-horror look becoming one of panic.

"Well, I have been designed to be practically human," Sella explained, ignoring Ado's discomfort. "Including the act of procreation if necessary, so yes I-"

"Waugh! Enough already!" Ado shouted, closing his eyes and blocking his ears. "I've had enough mental trauma for one day! Just tell us what to do to re-enter the room!"

Leo burst out laughing while Sella looked on, her brow quirked in confusion before she decided not to press the issue.

"Strip," Sella said without preamble.

"Are you serious!?" Ado exclaimed, instantly going redder in the face from embarrassment.

He never really had gotten used to living with a woman, even if she was a maid. Or maybe it was because she was a maid? Leo had never looked at his brother's browser history, so there could potentially be a maid fetish there…

Just to further press his brother's buttons Leo gave in rather than fight and started unbuttoning the thick military-issue shirt Harry had procured for him.

"Fine," Leo sighed, letting the soiled shirt drop to the floor and starting to untie his boots. "I call first shower!"

"You always get the first shower!" Ado complained from his position leaning against the door frame, obviously desperate to change the subject, while Sella inspected the wound through his torn pant-leg.

"First born," Leo said, shucking his pants. "First shower."

With that pronounced end to the conversation a very naked Leo dashed across the common room, ducking into the bathroom he and Ado were being forced to share.

"You could have left your trunks on!" Sella shouted after him, no doubt as red as Ado had been.

Leo loved his position as older brother, specifically because it meant being the antagonist; a role he took very seriously. Sella was close enough to the brothers now that even she wasn't spared his buffoonery.

Leo sighed contentedly as hot water, heated magically in the basement of the house by a specially created homunculus, rushed over his face. That was Old Man Acht's one concession to modern technology; the glory that was indoor-plumbing, even if he had to justify it by heating the water magically.

Leo sighed again as the water rhythmically massaged his head and shoulders; for two years there had been little change; he and Ado had gone about their preparations in an almost robotic fashion. He knew for a fact that his little brother wasn't invested in this battle of magi he was being prepared for, but it couldn't be helped. Unless he was willing to cut his own arm off, he wasn't getting out of it alive.

Leo was doing his best to keep his brother's spirits high, but he had his own work to do; things that Ado should be doing but couldn't. He was researching the best spells that his brother could be trained to use in such a short period of time, the best ways to amplify his powers to the point where he could maintain a servant for the Holy Grail War, things like that. Ado simply lacked the background knowledge in the magical arts to do it himself, so while Leo had to do his own research and work he had to do Ado's as well.

His own 'research' into making ice harder than steel was going well; he just had to pinpoint the exact point that his mana flowed properly in the experiments before he could apply that level of power to the spell without blowing the ice up and sending shards flying everywhere. Again.

But Ado had free run of the Guest Wing on his own most of the time after he finished with Sella, which was one of the main reasons he'd been pushing to get a mercenary to train his brother; to eat into that spare time a little. Fortunately Ado was responding well to Harry's tutelage.

The Einzberns were getting restless, too; the Grail had grown so unstable that no one was sure when the war would start; a little longer and they would have to relocate to Japan just to be sure they got there in time. But Ado's slow progress as a magus was another thing making the Einzberns nervous, too. They were worried that he wouldn't be capable of summoning a high-level servant when the time came to travel to Fuyuki, which was apparently fast approaching.

Which meant Ado would have to start learning to speak Japanese soon, seeing as the language imprint spells didn't seem to stick with him. He'd spoken German for all of thirty minutes before the spell had worn off, thanks to his unique dispelling quality, and any further attempts just lasted less and less time. In the end it had been easier to imprint English on all of the servants they'd be dealing with, rather than try and make him learn German.

Fortunately Leo already spoke passable Japanese from working in the tourism industry back in Cairns for so many years, and Sella was fluent, no doubt from magical means, so they could at least teach him relatively easily between the two of them.

Leo stretched out his overworked muscles, feeling the rune-stones beneath his skin fused to his magic circuits shift with the motion. He winced, noticing for the first time the tears in his leg muscles from that last jump.

He didn't need to carry the runes that way, though; he was trialling a new method that he was going to use on Ado. He would carve a set of strengthening runes on the most potent stone focus he could get his hands on, implant them at key points of his brother's physiology and hopefully he could learn to activate them properly. Doing so would result in temporary bursts of enhanced speed and strength, but they had a draining effect on the user's vitality as Leo had realized that day. The punishing endurance training Ado put himself through daily would make a huge difference, though.

Leo resolved to begin training a little harder once his research was finished.

Leo put everything out of his mind as he reached for the shampoo, lathering it up in his hair and beard, letting his mind relax like his body.

But… something was off.

Leo sniffed the damp air.

The shampoo… smelled funny…

* * *

Ado sat wrapped in a blanket, but still actually wearing his shorts underneath it unlike a certain brother who had just streaked through their suite, while Sella administered healing magic to his injured calf.

"Is this the only injury from today?" she asked as a subtle green glow formed around her fingers.

She pressed her glowing fingers to the cut on Ado's leg that she'd just finished cleaning, a warm and calming sensation spreading throughout the young man as the healing magic took effect.

"Yeah, that's the only one I know of. Apparently Leo's fine, too," Ado said, adding the last part in a groaning voice.

It had been pretty easy to tell he wasn't injured…

"I wish he could keep his pants on for more than twenty minutes at a time," Ado added sadly, shifting to get a little more comfortable.

Sella gave a quiet snort of a laugh, her hair cascading over her shoulder with the motion as she did, reminding Ado that there was a female in close proximity. After two years he still wasn't used to her presence, especially when she was wearing plain clothes like today, rather than the sterile white hooded maid's uniform that was the norm in the Einzbern castle. At least when she wore the uniform he could talk to her; she didn't look so… well, feminine in the uniform.

"Alright, that should speed things up considerably," Sella said, the magic stopping as she reached for some bandages.

"Take a shower, and when you come out I'll wrap the wound for you."

"Er, thanks, but I think I can manage," Ado mumbled.

Sella huffed as she stood, crossing her arms and glaring down at Ado with the 'you're my master but I'm really the one in charge' look he'd come to know all too well in the last two years. He'd been on the receiving end of it enough times to know he wasn't getting out of her ministrations.

Ado sighed. "I mean, of course, Sella. Thank you for your attentiveness to my continued health and wellbeing."

"Of course, master," she said, bowing slightly and smiling at her decisive victory, before going to retrieve the soiled clothes from the hallway.

Leo's fatigues had left a bloody smear on the white marble, but that was officially some other homunculus' domain, so Sella obviously wasn't bothered by it. Ado's clothes would require a second trip, though; his thick winter gear and jacket would be too heavy for the physically weak maid to carry all at once without getting her own clothes dirty.

"At least let me clean my own boots," Ado called as Sella dumped the clothes down the laundry chute.

"It's a military thing," he explained when she gave him a look equal parts glare and curiosity.

Sella sighed as she set the dirty boots off to one side of the door. "Of course, master; if that is your wish."

The atmosphere in the room was almost painfully awkward now. You would think that after two years Ado would have adjusted, but no; Leo treated Sella almost like a surrogate sister in replacement of their third sibling that they'd left in Australia, but Ado couldn't get over the fact that Sella was… well, Sella.

She was, in a word, amazing. She did everything for them without a word of complaint, indeed with barely a word at all most days. She managed to put up with Leo's endlessly irritating practical jokes, too, which would have broken most house-keepers by now; and on top of it all she had a personality that made it incredibly easy to forget she wasn't actually human. Ado idolized her single-minded dedication to the brothers, but assumed that if he'd been designed and created that way he would probably act the same way, too. Plus she was hot, which really didn't help when Leo treated her like a sibling.

Ado shook his head, trying to exorcise such thoughts from his mind.

Sella cast an expectant look over to the bathroom door as the sound of the running water ceased, Ado emulating her out of curiosity. The door swung open as if kicked, and Leo strode out wearing naught but a towel, bold as you please, grinning like an idiot.

"If this is your idea of a revenge-joke, you failed miserably," the older Sigmund said to Sella, a huge grin on his face as he ran a brush through long, hot-pink hair, his beard a matching shade of pink.

"I actually think this look suits me. Try green next time; I look horrible in green."


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note**

**Wow… long time between updates… Another slower chapter for anyone actually reading this story; I swear this is all building up to something.**

**I've gone back and re-edited the previous chapters; mostly one and two, just to bump the quality up a little. The amount of tiny errors that managed to sneak by both myself and my editor were actually kinda embarrassing… I figured I'd better do it now, before I got further into the story. I'm the author, I can do that.  
**

**Tangent: As I so often like to do when things are set in the same universe I intend to make various nods to the other works of the 'Nasu-verse'; namely **_**Tsukihime**_**, but perhaps other bits and pieces, too (**_**Kara no Kyoukai**_**? **_**Mahou Tsukai no Yoru**_**? I dunno yet; we'll see what happens). The priests from the previous chapter, for instance; the whole monster-hunting priest thing is right out of **_**Tsukihime**_**. I don't intend for actual characters from other titles to make appearances, so I'm not classifying it as a cross-over story; I just wanted to clarify that since **_**Fate**_** and **_**Tsukihime**_** both take place in the same universe I'm taking advantage of that fact to make things a little more interesting story-telling wise. In other words: VAMPIRES HO!**

**Read, review and enjoy!**

* * *

**Chapter 4**

_The Clock Tower, London – 4 Years Ago_

Waver thumped his head on the table beneath him a few times, trying to force his brain to concentrate; if his students could see him now, dishevelled and unrested, they'd never look at him the same way again.

Two years; nearly two years it had taken him to fix this stupid formula for enhancing the output of mana-storing gems, from start to finish.

Two years of his life. The last time he'd left his workshop was six months ago, give or take a week.

In the end he had given up on the original formula, instead using parts of it in a new one that would make artificial gems with the properties he, or rather Schweinorg, was seeking; gems that amplified the stored prana considerably once it was used.

Now, he was just doing the last part of any experiment; properly documenting his methodology and findings.

But of course, his skills with magic were so negligible that he couldn't get a good feel for weather or not the gems worked properly. He needed someone more familiar with the archaic gem-enhanced magic, someone also incredibly powerful that could cast a large enough spell for him to observe the mana flow.

Unfortunately there was only one name that sprung to mind out of the entirety of the students and staff of the Clock Tower; a first-rate Magus, well on her way to becoming a high-ranking First-Class member of any association she chose to.

"Rin Tohsaka," Waver groaned, thumping his head on the table again.

God he hated dealing with her at the best of times… and he had barely slept in days, he was so eager to be done with this task…

"_Fervor, mei sanguis_," Waver muttered tiredly, waving a hand over the floor.

After a few seconds a familiar puddle of silver mercury rolled across the floor, coalescing into the form of his maid-golem and bowing politely.

"Yes, master?" the golem asked in a pleasant tone, freshly awoken from her stand-by mode.

"Clean this place up and ready a bath for me," Waver groaned, forcing tired muscles up straight and rubbing at the thick coating of stubble on his chin. "We're going to be receiving a visitor."

* * *

There was a loud knock at the door to Waver's workshop in the subterranean levels of the Clock Tower, where he also chose to make his home. The door opened into a spacious, yet still cozy sitting room that had been momentarily cleared of everything that could possibly be broken or lit on fire. Two doors on opposing walls opened into his 'actual' workshop, where he did his experiments, and a living area much more suited for a Japanese teenager, occupied by a low bed, a TV and a large amount of gaming and military memorabilia.

"Let her in," Waver said with a distracted wave as he rotated the gems he held in one hand, the unlit cigar in his mouth bobbing up and down with his words.

He'd managed to make ten gems of varying types; three rubies, two emeralds, a topaz, three small sapphires and, in his mind the most unstable of the lot, a large diamond that had the most prana-storing potential; all artificially created using raw materials and alchemy, the gems used the same concept of interior space distortion that many magi in the Association favoured using in their workshops to make interior spaces larger than the exterior shell. A complex spell, one that had taken Waver weeks to prepare for; even then, his old friend Eric Sigmund had provided most of the mana for the spells when he had crafted them. The other half of these gems' trick was more complex, and could only be likened to the focusing lenses on a laser. Rather than actually increasing mana stored, the molecular structure of the gems had been altered to only release a very specific amount at a very specific time. The real flaw with gem-casting was the amount of energy lost during casting; these gems eliminated that factor, allowing for one hundred percent of the stored mana to be utilized by the caster.

If the caster was skilled enough and familiar enough with the magics to control it.

Waver sighed as the door opened; he'd much rather be working with Eric on this task, but the man had no experience using gemstones. The Bloodhound of the Mages Association preferred to rely on his own skill and his words of power rather than seeking outside assistance with his spells. Even still, he never looked down on those like Waver who had no other choice but to use prana-enhancing tools, a rare trait among magi and probably the reason they had become friends in the first place.

Wearing a barely disguised look of disdain, Rin Tohsaka stepped into Waver's empty workshop. She had grown over the last few years, finally shedding the last vestiges of childhood that teenagers carried around and becoming a young woman; and a painfully attractive young woman, if Waver were honest. She no longer wore her hair up with those ridiculous ribbons, choosing instead to let it fall loosely around her shoulders. She still had a penchant for wearing red, but where she had at times seemed almost like a child playing at being an elegant lady in the past, she had truly become one now. If only Waver were ten years younger…

"What do you want, _Lord_ El Melloi?" she asked in a cold voice, emphasizing his title and no dobut pointedly leaving out 'the Second' just to piss him off.

Of course, Waver thought with a bitter smile. They were alone here; she didn't have to be polite like she usually was. She'd probably only shown up because he'd summoned her as a Lord; a proper Lady would heed the summons of her superior, even if she didn't like him.

"I had to change my flights to be here, so this had better be important."

That was right; word had trickled down to him that she would be continuing her research back in Japan and taking over her father's position as Overseer of the Fuyuki area, leaving the Clock Tower semi-permanently. Good timing on Waver's part, then, that he'd decided to send for her that day.

"Here," Waver said, forgoing their usual back-and-forth and casually tossing the diamond to Rin, who caught it reflexively.

She blinked a few times, looking down at the gem.

"This…" she muttered, holding the gem up to the light, her previous irritation momentarily forgotten. "What have you done to this gem?"

Her voice was curious and sounded somewhat impressed; a far cry from the dismissive attitude she usually treated Waver with.

"It's a little experiment," Waver said nonchalantly, lighting his cigar with one of the candles illuminating the room. "But I lack the requisite skills to channel any power into the gems I've created. Just store some mana in the gem, and then use it to cast something small. If you can do it successfully, you can keep them all."

He said the last part holding out his hand, displaying the gems still in his hand.

"What's the catch?" Rin asked suspiciously.

"I don't know if it will work," Waver answered truthfully.

_Or if they'll blow up in your face_, he added silently, deciding not to vocalise that little titbit.

Rin nodded, looking down at the gem in her gloved hand and closing her fist about it.

"What level of spell are we talking?" she asked finally, flipping long black hair over her shoulder with her other hand.

Waver shrugged, indicating to a blank spot on the stone wall behind them.

"Scorch the wall a little," he said, stepping back a few paces.

Rin nodded, reaching down to the chain around her neck and pulling a small crystalline shard out of her blouse before pricking the end of her finger with it. She dabbed the drop of blood onto the gem in her hand, and with a small flash the mana from her blood was absorbed into the gem. Nodding with satisfaction Rin placed the strange charm hanging around her neck back into her blouse and held the diamond between two fingers, pointing her palm towards the wall Waver had indicated to.

"_Fieur!_" she said forcefully, casting a basic fire spell that should have made a decent sized fireball launch at the bare stone wall.

Instead, Waver found himself diving to one side as the entire wall was engulfed in flames, Rin being thrown back by the unexpected intensity of her spell.

Once the flames subsided Rin and Waver both looked across the scorched floor at each other.

"Yes!" Waver burst out laughing, standing and pumping his fists excitedly. "I knew it would work!"

Rin sat where she had landed, looking curiously at the gem again.

"I…" she muttered, at a loss. "There's still so much mana in the gem. I should have used it all up easily with that spell, but…"

Waver, still grinning, bent to retrieve his cigar. He brushed it off a few times, before lighting it again with the flames still licking at the corner of the wall before patting them out.

"Here," he said, blowing out a lung-full of smoke in victory before reaching down to help Rin to her feet.

Usually she would have slapped his hand away, claiming she didn't need his help, but she wordlessly took the proffered hand and climbed to her feet, dusting herself off.

Waver noticed that the backdraft from the spell had ruined her delicate black gloves and burnt the outer layer of her clothes. A waste; the girl's taste no doubt ran towards the incredibly expensive.

"This could revolutionize the magical world," Rin said, her own excitement growing as she studied the diamond.

Waver shrugged, holding out the rest of the gems to her.

"Well, here. I'm a man of my word."

Rin nodded, carefully accepting the handful of gems before placing them in her pocket.

She cleared her throat, hastily returning to her normal dismissive attitude.

"Thank you, Lord El Melloi," she said with a light bow. "If that is all…"

Waver nodded, distracted and already thinking of how to write this all up.

Rin silently left, but something caught Waver's eye just as she reached up to close the door behind her. He waited a few moments, his brain struggling to switch gears and process what he had just seen.

"Maid-Golem," Waver called once Rin was gone.

The Golem coalesced beside him, smiling happily like it always did.

"Summon Eric. Tell him it's urgent."

* * *

_The Einzbern Castle, Germany – 4 Years Ago_

Leo sat idly on a couch in the common-area of the suite he and Ado shared, practicing scales on his cherry-red electric guitar, ignoring the fact that it was unplugged and focusing instead on his finger movements.

Ado sat across from him, head lolling and eyes practically rolled back in their sockets.

"You look tired," Leo said with a devilish grin, fingers flying across the fret-board.

"Harry's… designed a new… obstacle course… for me…" Ado wheezed. "And I do it… with a seventy-five… kilo… pack…"

"Yeesh," Leo sighed. "Sounds harsh. But don't worry; his contract's almost up, and then you'll be all mine."

Sella cleared her throat from next to Leo, not even looking up from whatever book she was reading.

"Ours," Leo amended. "You'll be all ours."

Sella made a satisfied sound before turning a page; she'd been tutoring Ado all this time, so it would be unfair of Leo to simply steal him away now.

Well, it would actually be perfectly fair considering that Sella wasn't technically human, but Leo wasn't about to argue semantics with the woman that cooked his food and washed his underwear.

In the last few months Ado's physical training had intensified to the point where Leo no longer held any doubt that he could kill an entire squad of US Marines naked and blindfolded, Harry having taken his role very, very seriously. The old Irishman apparently didn't practice what he preached, though; Ado constantly complained that all Harry did was yell at him and tell him to run faster or hit harder from the back of his scooter.

"Trust me," Leo said, watching his fingers carefully as they wrapped around a particularly difficult scale. "You'll be begging to have Harry back when you start my training regime."

"Christ, kill me now," Ado moaned, on the verge of tears.

"Oh I'm exaggerating," Leo chided, chuckling a little.

"And on that happy note, I bid you both good night," Sella said, clapping her book closed and rising.

"Please do not hesitate to call on me if you require anything else, masters," she added with a light bow.

Of course by 'please don't hesitate to call on me' Sella really meant 'if you wake me up before six I'll murder you in your sleep', but Leo had learned to let sleeping dogs lie.

As soon as the homunculus maid left the room he began quickly packing his guitar away, sliding it safely under the couch when he was done.

"Going to bed?" Ado asked tiredly.

"Something like that," Leo said with an evil grin.

"Here," Leo added, tossing a pile of books and papers onto the table in front of Ado. "Some homework for you: all of the information dad could get on previous Holy Grail Wars from the Clock Tower and the Atlas Academy; profiles on the former masters and servants, the battles that were fought between them, all that kinda crap. There's also an old tourist printout for Fuyuki; hardly the best maps and information, but all I could find in English. Make sure you read it all carefully. We'll start working on your Japanese next week."

Leo stood, glancing over his shoulder suspiciously as Ado reached for the bundle. Before Ado could ask what his brother was up to his question was answered by a very loud shriek, followed by Sella screaming Leo's name with more malice than Ado had ever heard from even the man's ex-girlfriends.

"Leo you bastard!"

The older Sigmund burst out laughing as he leapt over his brother and the couch he was lying on and darted from the room in a much more graceful fashion than he usually moved into the corridor, his maniacal laughter fading as he put distance between himself and his pursuer.

Sella burst out of her smaller room clad in a thick bathrobe, breathing heavily as she clutched the bathrobe close to her chest with a look of murder on her face.

"Leo! What kind of ignorant jerk freezes a lady's mattress solid and then remakes the bed over it!? I'll kill you!" Sella roared into the corridor, taking off after him and demanding that he thaw her bed this instant.

Ado looked up, now alone in the empty sitting room.

"I hope he runs fast, 'cause she looks pissed," he muttered, pulling himself to his feet and shuffling in the general direction of his room, the bundle securely under one arm. He'd read it later. Sleep came first.

* * *

_Fuyuki City – 4 Years Ago_

The electronic chime sounded as the glass doors to the large book store in downtown Fuyuki opened, letting cool air-conditioned air wash over the back of the tall bespectacled woman exiting the shop.

"Come again!" the male cashier called hopefully, although if he were to be entirely honest he didn't mind watching her leave either.

As always, though, the tall woman ignored him, striding out without a wasted word or movement cradling the bag of new books she bought in both hands like they were a precious treasure, the same way she always did.

The cashier sighed, leaning on the counter and thinking to himself that he'd never understand all the eccentric, beautiful women of the world. But that was probably for the best; there were things that mortal men were not meant to know.

Out on the street the heroic spirit 'Rider' was having similar thoughts as her finely honed senses registered the cashier's wandering eyes while she left the store, but it couldn't be helped; this was the only decent book store in all of Shinto. Once a week Rider was forced to make the pilgrimage across the river and suffer through that cashier's lecherous gaze just to buy a few new books to keep her going for another week. It wasn't that there were no bookstores in Miyama, the residential district of Fuyuki where her master lived, but it felt nice to actually ride somewhere with a destination in mind, rather than just in circles around the suburban streets where she resided.

Knee-length long purple hair swaying in the wind atop a pair of jeans and a plain black sweater, Rider pushed the special glasses she wore further up her nose as she stood and watched the crowds pass, content to go about their every-day lives and ignore the terrible things that happened in the past in this town.

The people of Fuyuki had bounced back quickly after the debacle that was the previous Holy Grail War, where a rogue spirit from within the Grail itself went mad and killed hundreds of people. 'Mysterious Disappearances' the Japanese government had called them during the investigation. Nearly four hundred people all told had died as collateral damage during the war; men, women and children indiscriminately devoured by the Anti-Heroic spirit Avenger, and with the Church's help the Mage's Association managed to cover it up as an act of terrorism of some sort; Rider was a little sketchy on the details, but such things not concerning her or her master were hardly warranting of her attention. Not, she thought as she carefully placed the bundle of books in the basket of her favoured bicycle and shuddered with barely contained excitement, when she had new books to read.

Rider hesitated a moment as she went to ride out into the bicycle lane of the street, waiting to let a white van pass.

It had been four years since the conclusion of the Fifth Grail War, a conclusion where the Grail had been sealed again and the way to the Source had actually been opened for the first time in the history of the Fuyuki Grail War before being subsequently closed before anyone could claim it. It was also a conclusion that saw her master still connected to the power of the Grail, allowing her to maintain Rider's presence in the world.

As Rider pulled into the street and began pedalling, she mused that just like the people they had once been Heroic Spirits were true individuals. She knew of a multitude of spirits that would have balked at the thought of a life with a semi-reincarnation such as Rider currently had; in fact it would be more accurate to say that she was closer to a familiar than anything else, but that was something Rider was alright with. Her master was a good person and treated Rider like any other human. She had even allowed Rider to get a part-time job so she didn't tear through her books so fast, rather than so she could buy them herself. That was the kind of master that Rider served. She was a part of the household, not as a servant, but as an equal despite being so far from human.

In the last four years, for the first time in her life Rider had been able to enjoy a peaceful existence where all she had to do was read and occasionally go to work or help do the housework and cooking. It had been a melancholic paradise for her, getting to live averagely.

Rider's master and her partner, though, had been anything but idle in that time; her master had taken great lengths to make a home for her partner while he went to school for an engineering degree. Her master was a powerful magus, too, and her partner was a dangerously competent swordsman, but in this peacetime their skills were going to waste. They spent their time simply living, rather than using the skills they had.

Such was a decent lot in life, though, Rider mused as she came up to the Fuyuki Bridge. If one didn't have to fight Rider didn't see any problem not seeking out conflict. Her master kept her skills from atrophying, and her master's partner trained diligently every day; such was enough for them, so Rider was content not to pry. As a spirit Rider's skills would never atrophy, so there was no need for her to train; she was as deadly now as when she had been first summoned.

Rider glanced up as the same white van as before passed her on the central motor-vehicle section of the bridge. Something about the van bothered her, but she put it up to an overactive imagination and chose to ignore it as the van trundled on towards the suburbs.

Without any further incident Rider found herself coming to a stop just outside the gated wall of her home; the Emiya residence compound. An old Japanese style property, Rider had heard it referred to as a 'Samurai Compound' in the past, comprised of four buildings; the main house, the attic of which being Rider's home; the dojo; the garden shed, the location of her master and her master's partner's workshop; and the guest house, the domain of her master's older sister when she visited. All of this was surrounded by a tall brick wall, separating it from the outside world with only a single gatehouse for access.

Inside the gatehouse Rider carefully leaned her beloved bicycle against the wall, closing the large wooden gates behind her and stepping onto the path that cut through the carefully manicured lawns.

Her master would no doubt be in the kitchen beginning dinner preparations by this time of day; Rider considered joining her to help expedite the task until a familiar sound put her on edge. Gently placing the books in her hands on the ground she leapt up atop the sloped roof of the compound's outer wall in a single effortless bound, peeking over the rim of the tiled peak in time to see the same white van rounding the corner at the end of the block.

Rider slid silently back down to the edge, letting one leg dangle off into the compound as she held her chin in thought. Two times was a coincidence; three times meant someone was staking them out.

She would have to tell her master about this. It was a slim possibility that they were in danger.

* * *

_The Einzbern Castle, Germany – 4 Years Ago_

"Ow, you crazy old bastard! I am not a voodoo doll! Be gentle!"

Ado's pleas fell on deaf ears as Harry huffed, attempting for the third time to get the needle in his hand to go into a vein in the boy's arm.

"Well if you'd hold still for thirty bloody seconds… Usually when I stab someone it's for the direct purpose of causing as much injury as possible. This is a little new to me," Harry grumbled under his breath, sticking his tongue out in concentration before hopping back a little. "There. Done."

Harry hastily attached the end of the thin tube now running from Ado's arm to a bag and placed it on the hook on the side of the chair, patiently waiting for it to fill.

Ado, Leo and Harry were sitting in their converted 'Operations Centre', which was really just the only room in the castle with electricity or internet. A small desk sat in one corner, an old laptop and printer humming away in sleep-mode while not in use. The rest of the walls had wide counters sitting in front of them, a multitude of firearms and the various tools for the upkeep and repair of said firearms scattered about. Above the counter directly inside the doorway was a long gun-rack, even more rifles and machine guns sitting snugly on it. The centre of the room was occupied by a chair reminiscent of the ones found in dental surgeries, where Ado habitually sat while his blood was taken to be stored in the low fridge beneath the counter. Leo would then use alchemy to powder the blood, and pack it into the shells of bullets, creating what the older Sigmund brother called 'Whammy Bullets'.

This room was Ado and Harry's playground; Leo's workshop, where he did his magical experiments and research, was two doors down. The first thing that Leo had done was smash the ornate old windows to let the outside winter chill in. His origins lay in ice; his magical peak could only be attained when the ambient temperature was below freezing. Not an easy feat to achieve while he'd been in Tropical Australia, so it was a nice change of pace to actually feel powerful.

"Here's a thought; why don't you sit in the chair, and I'll stab you?" Ado grumbled.

"Because I need powdered blood, not powdered whiskey," Leo said from the other side of the room, not looking up from where he was busily packing the 'whammy bullets' he'd just finished making into a cartridge for Ado's M-14.

"That's a negative racist stereotype, lad," Harry said with a rough laugh. "Besides, with the Boss' ban on booze, all you'd get outta me right now is air!"

The old Irishman continued to laugh at his own joke, slapping his knees and doubling over.

"Did you wind up tracking down that 'thing' I asked you to find for me?" Leo asked, pulling the glasses off of his face and carefully placing them back in their case before turning.

Harry nodded, still grinning like a child.

"Already sitting in your icebox, lad," the older man said, referring to Leo's workshop.

The older Sigmund nodded, standing and stretching.

"I've had enough of making these stupid Whammy Bullets for today," he said. "I'll be in my workshop if anyone needs me."

"Can we please give them a better name?" Ado asked before Leo left, the bag slowly filling with his blood jiggling with his movements. "Something a little less 'playground' and a little more 'military', maybe?"

Leo shrugged.

"They're packed with your blood," he said dismissively as he stepped into the hallway. "You name them."

* * *

"You know what I don't get?" Ado asked later that afternoon as he stripped down and cleaned his M-14, a cotton swab taped to the small puncture wound just beneath his elbow. "How the hell are we going to get all this shit into Japan?"

"Ah-ah-ah," Harry said quickly, waving the glowing ember of his cigarette at the younger man while he tinkered with something-or-other on the other side of the room. "I think you mean 'you'. How do 'you' plan to get all this shit to Japan; I'm just here to train your sorry arse. That whole Grail War crap you keep bitchin about is your problem."

"Gee," Ado muttered, rolling his eyes as he slid the gun back together with practiced hands. "Thanks for your concern."

Ado knew he probably shouldn't have told the old mercenary about his mission, but god knew he had been getting stir-crazy being cooped up in the castle with only his brother and Sella to talk to before Harry had come along. The other Einzberns in the castle, the actual masters of the family, avoided him like the plague, and the majority of the homunculi couldn't talk or hadn't been designed with the capacity to do so, so they were little more than ghosts wandering the halls and doing chores and other jobs most of the time; ghost-like especially considering the pale complexions and white hair; they creeped Ado the hell out. For some reason, probably because he spent so much time around her, Ado didn't see Sella in that light, but she was still a maid and he was still supposed to be her master, even if she did kick his ass on a pretty regular basis.

"'S got nothing to do with concern, lad," Harry said, hefting what he had been working on; an anti-personnel mine, no less. "'Sall about professionalism. You want me to give you step-by-step instructions about how to sneak this shit into Japan? You know I take cash."

The older man's harsh words were offset by the light tone he said them in and the cheery wink he gave Ado, who sighed and shook his head.

"I'll even give you mate's rates," Harry added with a chuckle as he set the mine down.

Harry had come along like someone had lit a string of firecrackers in the main dining hall while the Einzberns were eating dinner. His blunt mannerisms and severe sarcasm had made Ado take an instant liking to him; the mercenary was almost like an older, ginger version of his brother. Or perhaps he was just so relieved to see another human being that the man's inherit ass-hole-like behaviour was going ignored in Ado's head.

The young would-be soldier sighed and ran a hand through his hair before setting the rifle to one side.

"What the hell is wrong with me? I'm actually considering that offer," he muttered.

Apparently Harry had heard him, because the mercenary burst out laughing so hard he descended into a coughing fit.

"Oh lad, you know I'm just playing," Harry laughed. "It's all part'a the package they hired me for. I've already given the instructions to some 'associates' that'll do all the work for you when the time comes."

Ado nodded, leaning back in his chair and staring into space as the old mercenary started humming something tunelessly, beginning to do whatever it was he was doing to the mines that he'd brought into the castle.

It was strange, Ado mused, that the Einzberns didn't want anything to do with him or Leo. Weren't they there specifically because they'd been told to be? So why were the main family treating the Sigmunds so coldly? Ado couldn't wrap his head around it. The motivations of magi seemed to be completely at odds with that of an average person like him.

Well, Ado amended as he looked down at his left arm with the magic crest sitting beneath his skin; perhaps not so average anymore.

Most of the talk that Leo gave him about the specifics of mage-craft went in one ear and out the other, and Sella absolutely refused to tell him any more than was absolutely necessary for him to learn his basics. Something about the number of his magic circuits being unusually high but also unusually unstable, whatever magic circuits were. The fact that the words 'magic' and 'unstable' came together in the same sentence made Ado understandably a little worried, but Sella had assured him that as long as he kept doing things the way he was he'd improve without hurting himself. Leo seemed to want to take the opposite approach and throw him in the deep end; give him high-level spells to use and master, but Sella was apparently against it. Ado was sometimes glad that there was at least one voice of moderation around him.

So, Ado wondered, stealing a glance at the mercenary while his back was turned, what was he going to do when Harry finally left?

* * *

_The Clock Tower, London – 4 Years Ago_

Eric Sigmund checked his watch for the fifth time, leaning back against the stone wall that separated the inconspicuous grounds of the Clock Tower from the rest of London. His friend Waver had called him – no, summoned would be more accurate – urgently, and now he was running late. Something ominous was going on, and he didn't like it.

Of course, being outside the confines of the Clock Tower meant that he was being watched by about fifteen different familiars, give or take a few, while he waited. Birds, cats, a couple of bats and even a golden retriever all watched him from the shadows or plain sight, blending in with the natural goings-on of a day on a busy London street. But Sigmund wasn't known as the 'Bloodhound' for nothing, and he'd spotted every one of them within his first five minutes of waiting.

Which, he thought with a sigh, had been fifteen minutes ago now.

He'd also spotted the nondescript white van parked on the corner of the block that had been following him since he left his flat. Nothing escaped his keen senses.

That's why he hated London and the Clock Tower, and even to a lesser extent the Atlas Academy and the Wandering Tomb; he was constantly watched and monitored everywhere he went. Granted, in his younger years he'd been a little 'reckless' and caused a significant amount of property damage once or twice, but cover-ups had been much easier in the eighties and nineties before the internet, so he still didn't see the big deal. The fact that twenty years later he was still being constantly watched whenever he went near a major metropolitan area irritated him a little, and after nearly four years in London he was ready to leave again. Or 'accidentally' blow something up just to spite the Mage's Association. He hadn't decided which yet.

His thoughts of imminent pyromania were interrupted when a handsome man a few years younger than him came walking towards him with a brisk pace, long black hair whipping around him in the wind over his black coat.

"Took you long enough," Eric grunted, bouncing off the wall and burying his hands in his pockets. "What was so important that-"

"Not here," Waver interrupted him, walking right past him without breaking pace.

"This way."

Waver led him through the crowded streets, past tourists complaining about the weather and locals just going about their business; a small flock of birds fluttered behind them above the buildings, following them openly and making Eric bark out a harsh laugh.

"Are they even trying anymore?" he guffawed to Waver's back.

"They want us to know we're being watched," was the other man's reaction as his pace quickened. "Come on."

Behind them the van slowly pulled into the street and followed at a distance.

* * *

_Warehouse District, London – 4 Years Ago_

"I'm glad you summoned me," Eric admitted as he leaned back against a stack of wooden shipping pallets. "I've been meaning to talk to you for some time, but every time you get your nose stuck in a bloody project…"

"I know, I know," Waver mumbled, waving a hand absently as he paced. "I get carried away. At least I got conclusive results with the last test batch of gems."

"Oh?" Eric asked with a smirk, crossing his arms. "They didn't blow up in your face this time?"

Waver grimaced, subconsciously rubbing at his only recently-regrown eyebrows to assure himself of their existence. That had been one of the reasons he'd been so scare around the Clock Tower lately…

The two men had finally been able to ditch the familiars about three blocks from the warehouse they were currently standing in, much to Waver's relief. Eric didn't seem to be phased though; if he didn't want the familiars to follow him, he could have lost them at any time. The trick was to do so while looking inconspicuous to the masters watching them. The last one to stay on their tail was the golden retriever that Waver had noticed, but according to his old friend there were a lot more than just the few birds and the dog that had been following them.

"Look, as fun as the small talk is we have a serious problem," Eric said, growing serious. "The Matous, or Zolgens or whatever the hell they're calling themselves now are on the move. Various magical and non-magical mercenaries have been hired and paid pro-bono in the last two years, only to mysteriously disappear."

"Mercenaries?" Waver repeated, lighting a cigar and taking a deep drag. "That is pretty serious. How many are we talking?"

"I don't know," Eric admitted with a sigh. "I only caught wind of this by accident, and even then it was hard enough to trace the accounts back to the Zolgen family in Russia."

"They're still in Russia?"

"Their accounts are, at least. That little bastard Vadim hasn't been spotted in public since I ran into him in Australia when the boys left. Not by the Einzberns' people, in any case. He's laying low, planning something."

"Something involving a lot of firepower, evidently," Waver muttered.

"Not just that, though," Eric added, running a hand through his short brown hair. "Any mage with even a hint of the Zolgen bloodline has been called to Russia; that was an easier trail to follow, seeing as any that said no were all found dead within a few days of refusing."

"Dead how?" Waver asked, trying to get a clearer image of the facts.

"Single gunshot wound to the head," Eric said, demonstrating by holding an index finger to his temple.

"So he's building an army," Waver stated, blowing a cloud of smoke out. "Great. Just great. At the very least we know where he's going, though."

"Yes," Eric said, looking away with a pained look on his face. "Fuyuki is going to wind up an honest-to-god warzone this time."

"He can't ignore the rules like this and get away with it," Waver grunted, shaking his head. "The Association won't let him."

"I'll handle things at Atlas," Eric said, bouncing off the stack of pallets and taking a few steps. "I still have some friends there. You handle things at the Clock Tower. We need to get some more bodies on our side for this before Zolgen starts a war; we need to head him off. I'd be getting ready if I were you."

"For what?" Waver asked, gripping his cane tightly in both hands and looking around the warehouse warily.

"That door," Eric said, his eyes taking on a misty quality as he expanded his senses to their limits. "Six men, all armed. I was wondering how long it would take them to work up their courage."

"Zolgen's men?" Waver asked, flicking his half-smoked cigar away and rolling out his neck.

"Probably. Does it really matter?"

"Not really," Waver admitted, shrugging off his coat and scarf and tossing them aside, pulling the end off of his cane and pulling out the long, thin blade it concealed.

"What," Eric teased as they began moving towards the door. "No maid-golem this time?"

Waver shrugged. "I need the exercise."

"Too bad," Eric grinned. "I love watching her work."

Now that they were drawing closer he could clearly hear the sounds of someone beating on the door; they weren't even trying to catch them by surprise.

"I'll go in low and fast from the side," Waver said as he began to jog towards the wall closest to the doors. "Give me some cover."

Eric nodded, already muttering the words of power he needed to focus whatever spell he had planned. Waver grinned as his back hit the cinder-block wall; it had been far too long since he'd had any real fun, since before Schweinorg had given him that stupid gem assignment. Luckily he'd been dedicated enough to keep up his workout routine throughout his studying, so his muscles hadn't atrophied. He might be a little rusty in actual combat, though.

His thoughts were interrupted when the doors blew inwards, smoke and fire following them; obviously the mercenaries (because who else would be chasing after them?) had gotten tired of trying to break the doors down and gone the 'explosive' route.

Waver watched as the smoke and flames coalesced, stalling in mid-air before blowing back directly in the faces of the mercenaries. That was Waver's cue, he decided, rolling forwards and coming up in the lingering cloud right beneath a soldier in black fatigues and carrying military-grade gear.

He lasted all of four seconds against Waver's alchemically enhanced blade, the thin knife slashing him open from hip to shoulder with little resistance. The mercenary fell to the ground with a wet splatter, dead before he could even get a shot off, and Waver was on to the next man in the group, slashing high for the neck. With a flash of golden light Eric joined the melee, swinging his two favourite short swords in wide arcs to try and attract the enemy's attention in the cloud off of the unprotected Waver. No doubt while he had been summoning the swords he had also been strengthening his skin with the spell his son was so fond of. A few stray shots bounced off of Eric's shoulder, driving him back and no doubt bruising him, but only slowing him down momentarily before he lashed out again, forcing a mercenary to step back into Waver's range, the other man striking fast and ramming his knife into the mercenary's back.

"Keep one of them alive!" Waver called as he rolled behind a stack of cargo crates, shots beginning to pepper the ground around him as the mercenaries started regaining their senses.

Eric rolled into cover next to him, panting and wincing every time he moved his right shoulder.

"That hurt like a bitch," the older man grumbled, massaging the already forming bruises.

"Man up," Waver told him as he dug around in his pockets, ignoring the hail of fire beginning to pour their direction from the two surviving mercenaries.

"What's that?" Eric asked as the other man pulled a small globe out of his pocket.

"Crystalized sunlight," Waver said distractedly, trying to sneak a glance around the crates to gauge the enemy positions.

"They're not vampires!" Eric complained loudly as a shot rained wooden shrapnel down on them.

Waver shrugged, tossing the small orb over their makeshift barricade and closing his eyes tight. He may not have been able to use magic directly, but he had nearly twenty years' worth of tricks to work with instead…

"You may want to close your eyes."

Before Eric could ask why he instinctively closed his eyes when a bright flash of light exploded behind them, filling the world with white and actually rocking the crates they were leaning back against. Waver stood without hesitation once the light faded, dusting off his hands on his pants and casually strolling out from behind the crates, idly twirling the long, thin blade in his hands.

"Okay," he said as he watched the two mercenaries scrambling around on the ground, utterly blinded. "I'll kill this one, you subdue that one."

The two mercenaries began panicking, and Waver had to step to the side to avoid a burst of blind fire from the one he was walking towards. A few feet away Eric deposited his swords back into the pocket dimension he usually stored them in and reached down, snatching the rifle from the hands of the man writhing at his feet before smacking him hard in the jaw with it. Waver kicked his own mercenary in the face, flipping him over before plunging the knife into his chest in one fluid movement. Apparently his worries about being rusty in a fight had been groundless.

"Oh god!" the man Eric subdued was sobbing when Waver approached. "You fuckers! I can't see! I can't see! You bastards! You wait til I get-"

Waver cut him off by pressing the blade of his knife to the mercenary's throat hard enough to send a drop of blood falling down the skin of his exposed flesh.

"Give me a name and I'll erase your memory and let you go," Waver lied in an even tone; neither he or Eric were capable of that kind of magic so they would eventually have to kill him, but he didn't need to know that. "Who sent you? Start talking before I start stabbing."

The man's throat bobbed up and down as he gulped back whatever insult was coming. Waver and Eric had just mercilessly taken the entire squad apart in less than two minutes; he had to know they weren't messing around.

The mercenary took a deep breath and clenched his jaw; Eric swore as a soft cracking sound echoed around the silent warehouse and the mercenary began to convulse, frothing at the mouth.

"Dammit," Waver grunted, stepping back from the corpse. "Poison. Really strong poison. Shit."

"These guys were pros," Eric said, squatting down next to one of the other bodies and ignoring the puddle of blood spreading at his feet. "Look at their gear; this is better than military issue, I can guarantee you that. And they had enough magical competence to set up a noise-cancelling barrier field, too. They're good."

"How would you know that about their gear?" Waver asked curiously, watching dispassionately as the man that had poisoned himself went into even more violent spasms.

Eric chuckled. "Do you know how often I had to listen to Ado bitch about their crappy gear when he got back from his stint in whatever peace-keeping operations he got stuck in? This stuff looks fresh off the assembly line, and it's too hi-tech. I doubt even Special Forces soldiers get this kind of gear."

Waver grunted as the mercenary at his feet's thrashing grew weaker. Being a Magus, even if he was an untalented one, he was still accustomed to death to the point where he was literally desensitized completely. It had taken some time to accomplish, but death no longer held the same power over his sense of fear that it used to. Still, watching as the young man at his feet clawed at his throat and gasped in vain while his wide, blind eyes Waver couldn't help but think that it was a pointless waste of life.

"Plus let's face facts," Eric continued as he stood. "Casuals don't kill themselves when they're captured. The question now is: were they after me, or after you?"

Waver had no idea. Killing oneself if a mission failed went above and beyond the call of a simple mercenary, or even a soldier. It bordered on fanaticism, on madness. These weren't guns for hire, not anymore; and both Eric Sigmund and Waver Velvet could potentially be targets for Zolgen if he was pulling the mercenaries' strings. They had both been snooping around trying to figure out the remaining Masters' identities and being a former master it wouldn't be impossible for Waver to be chosen again, not to mention it would demoralize the Sigmund boy currently training to be a master, so it stood to reason that Zolgen would want them both eliminated.

"Ah, forget it. Let's go get some coffee," Eric groaned, rotating his injured shoulder.

"I'll contact someone from the Association to come clean this up before someone finds it and makes a bigger deal out of it," Waver said, simultaneously sending telepathic orders to one of his familiars to do just that.

"Didn't you have something to tell me too?" Eric asked as they walked out of the warehouse through the broken doors.

"Ah, right," Waver said, cursing his scatter-brained self. "It's about the other Masters for the Grail War. I've found some of them."

"Them?" Eric asked, hesitating a moment. "As in… plural?"

Waver nodded. "Yeah, I probably should have contacted you earlier. Sorry, been kind of busy lately."


End file.
